


'^a. 



■!-vv:i!M; :-y. 



(.1"; 








Class. 
Book.. 



(bj)yright}^^i_nA 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSUTi 



A REVIEW 



Till PiTlffi 




FRO^I THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE A^'TI-SLATERY AGITATION^ TO THE 
CLOSE OF SOUTHERN RECONSTRUCTION ; 



COMPRISING ALSO A 



Resume o! the Career o! Thaddeus Stevens: 



BEING A SURVEY OF THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES, WHICH DESTROYED 
THE REPUBLIC AND VIRTUALLY MONARCHIZED ITS GOVERNMENT. 



Quando imperium tenent pravi, plorat populus. 



By ALEXANDER HARRIS. 



NEW YORK : 
T. H. POLLOCK, Publisher, 37 Park Row 

1876. 




,1 



Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1876, hy 

ALEXANDER HARRIS, 

lu the Office of Librarian of Congress at Wasiiington. 



STEREOTYPED BY 

J. & T. A. RAISBECK, 
Stereotypers & Electrotypers. 

No. 74 Beekman Street, 



PEEFACE. 



The undersigned proposes to pre-ent to 1he public a hi-tory, to be 
entitled " A Review of the Political Conflict in America." He dees 
so, in obedience to monitions that were ever reminding him, since the 
close of our civil war, that duty demanded of this generation, that it writ 3 
the truth concerning the origin and i^rogress of the conflict, through 
which the nation has passed. The work will also comprise a "Eesunio 
of the Career of Thaddeus Stevens," who conspicuously figured, as the 
leading revolutionist of the American Congress ; and who towered as the 
unconcealed contemner of law and the Federal Constitution. Until the 
work was completed, it had been the dtsign of the undersigned, to entitls 
it "The Life and Times of Thaddeus Stevens ;" because it was believed, 
that the prominence and admitted intellectual capacity of the man being 
treated, would secui'e attention from all classes of readers. But his ca- 
reer had been mainly selected, in order to embody therewith, the history 
of the times in which he lived ; and because also he of all American 
Statesmen, appeared as the typical representative of the destructive revo- 
lutionary movement, which the work is designed to illustrate and unfold. 
Upon its completion, however, the originally conceived title, appeare 1 
not to harmonize with what, it might have seemed to have imported; and 
therefore, after some reflection, it was changed to what ha ^ been adopted. 
The plan thus followed, in the treatment of the work, notwithstanding 
the change ol; title, will allow of a clearer light being reflected (as is be- 
lieved) upon the development and j)rogress of the revolution, as it passos 
scenically before the vision. 

The work will trace the conflict to its inception, deducing it from inhe- 
rent principles. It will thence follow the progress of the anti-slavery 
agitation, from its commencement to its full development in one of the 
political parties of the country, and its complete seizure of power, in tlio 
election of Abraham Lincoln, in 1860. The movement inte::ded to check 
the progress of sectionalism will also be sketched, until the final effort to 
do so, resulted in the secession of the Southern States ; and the blood;^ 
collision of arms followed. During the progress of the civil war, tiie ide 
conflict in Congress and throughout the nation, which animated and sus- 
tained the armed combatants vipon the fields of battle, is alone viewed 
and depicted. The Presidential and Congressional acts which had refer- 
Ciice to the prosecution of the war, and the motives influencing these, are 
presented in historical delineation of the political struggle, as it progressed 
The breach of President Johnson with his party, is detailed in appropria"; 
compass, and the conflict of parties which followed, until thereconstr' 
tion legislation of Congress, insm'ed the Africanization of the South. 



J.^ PEEFACB. 

"No asperity or bitternesG, should be aroused in the hrgasts of those, who 
may honestly differ with tiie author, as to the causes which led to our late 
conflict. He claims, as a free citizen, the right to present the reasons, 
which ever indued him to condemn the war against the South and its 
prosecution. He has presented these openly and fearlessly ; records for 
all time his conviction, that the w^ar was wholly unwarranted by the Fed- 
eral Constitution ; and he believes the time will come, when the majority 
of the American people, will be fully convinced that coercion was an 
unwise policy, adopted to preserve republican government. Not only un- 
wise, will they come to see it to have been, but wholly suicidal to the 
institutions, it was meant to preserve. The ship of state, which, under 
republican steersmen, had sailed on a calm ocean, no sooner came under 
the management of those of contrary principles, than it was driven upon 
the shoals and quicksands of political disorder, from which it is even 
problematical if it can ever be rescued. 

Though the work, to the unreflecting, may appear as if written to sub- 
serve partisan politics, the author disclaims all such motives, as in anyw.se, 
having influenced his undertaking. And, before being so accused, those 
thus charging him, should inquire, what selfish interest he could promote, 
by advocating views unpopular in both parties, in his state and section. 
Nay, the truth is the pole star by which he is guided, and, albeit he may 
be (as he has been heretofore) subjected to reproach and bitter vilification, 
for the maintenance of his opinions, he hesitates not to defend them, be- 
lieving, that though covered with the darkness 6f midnight, tlie dawn of 
morning is approaching. Our Union has sustained a long and arduous 
struggle, with the foes of her own household, but patriotism, like a deity 
seated upon some Olympian summit, has been from the first viewing the 
combat, and expecting every true Amer can to do his duty. Should none 
have the boldness to break the silence, the slumber of truth, might at 
times, be the sleep of death ; but she bas ever by her couch, her faithful 
sentinels to arouse her, and messengers to go forth amidst terror and 
gloom, to proclaim her immutable laws, to sound her clarion and arouse 
her hosts to victorJ^ 

Fully trusting, that tlie deductions of the Avcrk now to be submitted to 
the jDublic, are the inspiration of truth, the author invokes for them no 
leniency of criticism ; and, if able to be controverted by truth, logic and 
sound ratiocination, let them fall and forever perish ! For the author only 
desires to know tlie truth, and, if fully convinced that the opinions which 
he has steadily defended, since the commencement of the civil wa;-, were 
^roneous, he should himself be one of the first to disavow them. But 
', Vtil proven false, in the forum of reason, he claims the right to defend 
^^} publish them to the reflective world. Careful, however, as the au- 
thor has endeavored to be, historical inaccuracies, no doubt, will have 
eluded his scrutiny, and he is not so presumptuous as to conceive, but that 
his work, will disclose many literary errors to tlie critical eye. He en^,er- 
tains, nevertheless the hope, that it may in a slight degree help to pacify 
turbulent passion, and correct mistaken views ; and, so believing, hecom- 
-nits it to the judgment and criticism of ages. 

Alexander Harris. 



coi^te:nts. 



CHAPTER I. 

Pdge, 
EIKTH, EDUCATION, ADJnSSION TO THE BAR AND EARLY LEGAL SUCCESS 
OF THADDEUS STEVENS, - - - - - --9. 

CHAPTER n. 

RISE OF THE ANTI-MASONIC PARTY. ELECTION OF MR. STEVENS TO THE 
LEGISLATURE OF PENNSYLVANIA, - - - - - 21. 

CHAPTER HI: 

MASONIC INVESTIGATION. STAR CHAMBER COMmTTEE. CHARTER OF THE 
UNITED STATES BANK OF PENNSYLVANIA. MEMBER OF STATE REFORM 
CONVENTION, ------. -Og^ 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE EUCXSHOT WAR, -----.. 44. 

CHAPTER V. 

THE ANTI-SLAVERY AGITATION, - - - - - - 67. 

CHAPTER VL 

REMOVAL OF MR. STEVENS TO LANCASTER, PA. HIS SUCCESS AS A LAW- 
YER, AND HIS MOVEMENTS AS A POLITICIAN, - - - - 84. 

CHAPTER VII. 

AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND THEIR PRINCIPLES, - - 101. 

CHAPTER VIIL 

COMPROMISE MEASURES OF 1850, ----_. 123. 

CHAPTER IX. 

RESISTANCE TO THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. CHRISTIANA RIOT, &C., 143, 

CHAPTER X. 

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL, WITH THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COM- 
PROjMISE. ORIGIN, RAMIFICATION AND ASPECTS OF THE REPUBLICAN 
PARTY, .---. .... 155 



vi CONTENTS— Continued. 

CHAPTER XL 

Page. 
THE STRUGGLE FOR ASCENDENCY IN KANSAS, THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
CONFLICTING VIEWS INTO SECTIONAL ANTAGONISM, AND THE ULTIMATE 
TRIUMPH OF REPUBLICANISM, ------ 168. 

CHAPTER XII. 

SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES, AND THE EFFORTS AT COM- 
PROMISE, --------- 189. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

STATE SOVEREIGNTY AND CENTRALIZATION, OR THE OPPOSITE PRINCI- 
PLES OF GOVERNMENT STRUGGLING FOR ASCENDENCY, - - 213. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

WAR FOR THE UNION, -..---.- 239. 

CHAPTER XV. 

EMANCIPATION DECREED, - - - - - ,- - 257. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

EXECUTIVE UNCONSTITUTIONALISM, - - » - - 271. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

LEGISLATIVE UNCONSTITUTIONALISM, • - - - - 28G. 

CHAPTER XVIH. 

GOVERNMENTAL CONSOLIDATION REACHED, - - . - 306. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

DEMOCRATIC ANTI-WAR ATTITUDE, - - - - - 319. 

CHAPTER XX. 

THE NEW ERA, » - - - - - - 333. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE MILITARY SATRAPS, ■ • - - . _ 353. 

CHAPTER XXn. 

THE GREAT CONSPIRACY REVEALED, - _ . 359^ 

CHAPTER XXin. 

THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGN OF 1864, - - . - 375. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

FANATICISM TRIUMPHS, - - - • .. - 389. 



CONTENTS— Continued. vii 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Fage. 
THEORIES IN CONFLICT, ---.--_ 403. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

ANTI-REPUBLICAN RECONSTRUCTION, - - C - .. 415, 

CHAPTER XXVn, 

BREACH WITH PRESIDENT JOHNSON, - - ■• - - 425. 

CHAPTER XXVHI. 
THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGN OF 1866, ----- 439. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

FINAL RECONSTRUCTION, OR THE CLIMAX OF THE REVOLUTION REACHED, 456. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

THE AFRICANIZATION OF THE SOUTH, ----- 471. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

IMPEACHMENT OF ANDREW JOHNSON, - - - - - . 4gg_ 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

DEATH OF MR. STEVENS, WITH CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS, - - 502. 



CHAPTEK I. 

BIRTH, EDUCATION, ADMISSION TO THE BAR AND EARLY LEGAL SUCCESS OP 
THADDEUS STEVENS. 

Thaddeus Stevens v^^as bom at Danville, Caledonia County, 
Yermont, April 4tli, 1792. His parents were persons in limited ^ 
circumstances, being possessed of nothing save a poor farm, upon 
which they were enabled to rear their children with the most 
pinching and parsimonious economy. His father, named Joshua 
Stevens, was a shoemaker by occupation, but as he was a man of 
rather dissipated habits, he contributed little to the support of his 
family. He was well built, strong and muscular, and quite an 
athlete, bearing the reputation of being the best wrestler in hia 
county. He enlisted as a soldier in the war of 1812, and in the 
attack upon Oswego, received a bayonet wound in the groin, of 
which he shortly afterwards died. His mother, whose maiden 
name was Sarah Morrill, was a women of strong native sense, and 
of an unconquerable will and resolution. On account of the loose 
and irregular life of his father, the management of the farm and 
the rearing of the family devolved upon his mother ; and being a 
woman of shrewdness and penetration, she determined to afford 
her children (as all she could give them) the advantages of an ed- 
ucation. The school system of Yermont, at that time being very 
similar to that of the other Eastern States, Thaddeus was placed, 
as soon as old enough, under tutelage in one of these ISTew Eng- 
land seminaries of the people, where he soon acquired the rudi- 
ments of an English education. Being the youngest of the family, 
and besides, lame and sickly in youth, he obtained advantages in 
the way of schooling over and above his brothers. He was the 
favorite and pet of his mother, as is often the case with the 
mothers of deformed children ; and she spared no pains to provide 
that he should be in constant attendence at school, in order to 
prepare him as she fondly hoped, to make his way in life by 
some means not demanding manual exertion. She was not slow 
in perceiving his rare powers, in the acquisition of the ordinary 



10 A REVIEW OF THE 

"branches of an education ; and tlie thought occurred to her that 
one who could so thoroughly, and in so short a time, master read- 
ing, writing and arithmetic, should have an opportunity to try liis 
strength in the higher departments of knowledge. In a word, it 
was quietly resolved that Thaddeus should be sent to college ; and 
perhaps he might he able to carve his way to one of the profess- 
ions, at that time the goal of the ambition of every intelligent 
New England mother. But the path of life from the cradle to 
the grave, is beset with thorns ; and the smart of these young 
Thaddeus must also feel. On account of his lameness, being 
unable to sport around as briskly as other boys of his age, he came 
somewhat to be regarded as a youth of great sedateness and sobri- 
ety ; nor was he able to escape the taunts and jeers of his youthful 
school companions, who would at times mimic his limping walk, 
and otherwise annoy and vex him. These petty anoyances to his 
proud and sensitive nature, were very galling ; and in their oft 
repetition his stern and sedate character may originally have re- 
ceived its earliest impression. But although his young classmates 
were ready to gibe him because of his deformity, he had the sweet 
satisfaction of knowing that he could far outstrip any of them, so 
far as class standing was concerned. 

The following anecdote is related by Mr. Stevens of his school 
days, and whether narrated to create amusement, or to delineate 
character and the condition of the country at that early period, it 
at least deserves rehearsal in this connection : " At one time," said 
Mr. Stevens, " the schoolmaster was a broad shouldered Irishman. 
During a severe winter, the bears encroached on the settlement, 
and it became the duty of all good citizens to enlist in a war of 
extermination. The teacher marshalled his pupils, and at their 
head ventured to obstruct a noted bear-path, he being armed with 
a long rifle, well loaded and primed, and the boys with clubs and 
a miscellaneous assortment of weapons. The baying of the dogs 
soon indicated that the game was up, and the cracking of the 
bushes, that the bear was approaching. lie came on within a few 
feet of where the army was posted, and leaping up, his fore feet 
I'csting on a large log, he hesitated, while he snuffed the danger 
ahead. The teacher sounded the charge, saying to the boys : 'Now 
I'll show you a rale specimen of bear hunting.' But his impet- 
uosity," added Mr. Stevens, " overcame his discretion, and rushing 
on the astonished animal he demolished him with the butt end of 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 11 

his rifle. . "Wlien laughed at by the boys, and ralhed on Iiis for- 
getf uhiess by myself, the spokesman of them, he replied, 'an what's 
the use of powder and ball when the thing itself made sich an 
illegant shelalali^ " 

The first time that young Thaddeus was introduced to a knowl- 
edge of the world, as he himself related, was in the year 1804, 
when he accompanied his parents on a visit to Boston, to see some 
of their relations. It is inferred from what he remarked of this 
visit, that he then made up his mind to endeavor to procure riches, 
that he might be able to live as did the wealthy people, whom he 
there for the first time met. This resolution of one so yoimg 
shows his remarkable perceptive capacity, and his strong intellect ; 
and as this was his first knowledge of the power of money, it was 
natural that he should feel prompted to strive for that which he 
learned supplied so many of the wants of life. 

The desire for the accumulation of wealth, was that which first 
fired his youthful genius, and the sight of any other admitted ex- 
cellence, might have produced a similar resolve in his mind. Does 
not history record the names of several of the eminent ancients, 
whose ambition was excited by hearing a distinguished poet recite 
his verses at the Olympic games, or an orator thunder forth his 
eloquent harangues at the forum, or in the Senate chamber? 
Although in the present case, our visitor to Boston would seem 
very young to have formed such high resolves ; yet it is quite cer- 
tain that at that time he first determined that no efforts should be 
wanting on his part, to ascend the ladder of life set before all who 
make the proper efforts. 

The following year, after his parents had returned from Boston, 
the spotted fever prevailed to an alarming extent in his native 
County of Caledonia. For miles around his home, there M^as 
scarcely a family that escaped the attacks of this very dangerous 
disease. In some families all were sick at one time, and it was 
next to an impossibility to procure any assistance. In this condi- 
tion of affairs Mrs. Stevens became a ministering angel, as it were, 
to the sick of her acquaintance, visiting from family to family 
and relieving their needs in every capacity in which she was able 
to help them. In these visits amongst lier sick neighbors, she 
took young Thaddeus with her, and on these circuits of mercy, he 
obtained another glimpse of life which left an impress upon his 
memory that never forsook him. His heart was then tender, and 



12 A EEVIEW OF THE 

the sights of sulferhig which he witnessed, so operated upon his 
sensibilities as to make him ever afterwards kindly disposed to the 
sick and poor of every class. To such, to the end of his life, he 
was ever ready to extend a helping hand. 

Mr, Stevens' estimate of his mother we give in his own words, 
detailed shortly before his death. Speaking of his efforts in the 
Legislature in behalf of the Free School system of Pennsylvania, 
and in reference thereto, he said : " That is the work that I take 
most pleasure in recalling, except one perhaps, I really think the 
greatest gratification of my life resulted from my ability to give 
my mother a farm of 250 acres, and a dairy of 14 cows, and an 
occasional bright gold piece, which she loved to deposit in the 
contribution box of the Baptist Church which she attended. This 
always gave her great pleasure, and me much satisfaction. My 
mother was a very extraordinary woman. I have met very few wo- 
mien like her. My father was not a well-to-do man, and the support 
and education of the family depended on my mother. She worked 
night and day to educate me. I was feeble and lame in youth, 
and as I could not work on the farm, she concluded to give me an 
education. I tried to repay her afterwards, but the debt of a child 
to his mother, you know, is one of the debts we can never pay. 
Poor woman ! the very thing I did to gratify her most, hastened 
her death. She was very proud of her dairy, and fond of her 
cows, and one night going to look after them, she fell and injured 
herself so that she died soon after." 

As his father was a shoemaker, Thaddeus had an opportunity 
to pick up so much knowledge of this trade, as to enable him to 
make the shoes of the family, and perhaps a few for the neighbors. 
This be did at least after the death of his father. In his younger 
years, when first a candidate for the legislature, he used to boast 
that he was a shoemaker ; and this gave birth to the numerous 
stories that circulated all over Pennsylvania, after his fame as a 
great lawyer was fixed, that he first came to York as a shoemaker 
and worked at the business for some time before he studied law. 
These stories were purely mythical, as are many that are usually 
retailed concerning distinguished personages ; and have their 
origin in the deception and credulity of mankind : 

"Magnas it Fama per urbes 
Fama maliim, quo non aliud velocius ullum 
Mobilitate viget, vii-esque acquirit euiido." 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 13 

YvHien a boy, Tliaddeiis Stevens was a diligent reader nnd. 
like Benjamin Franklin, not having a great snpply of Looks, lie 
perused eveiything that came within his reach. Books at that 
early day, were not so plenty as at the present time, and particu- 
larly not within the reach of one so situated as he tlien found 
himself. His fondness for books, it is said, induced him at the 
early age of fifteen to essay the experiment of starting a library ; 
but whether this be one of the stories that accompany fame, we 
are not prepared to say. The example of Franklin, whose life by 
this time no doubt had been perused by him, might have very 
readily suggested such an idea in the mind of an intellectual youth 
of ISTew England. At least, it was not long after this time, that 
he began to teach school as a means of supply to aid him in his 
course through college ; for his parents were not able to provide 
"n every particular for his subsistence and expense whilst passing 
his collegiate career. The clothing, board, text-books and tuition 
of a college pupil, to a poor Yennont family, was no light burden ; 
but by his teaching and other industry, he greatly alleviated his 
parents, and enabled him to provide himself with some additional 
books by which he might store his mind with useful information. 
The first part of his classical course was made in Burlington Col- 
lege, Yermont, where he continued for a considerable period. 
" On September 11th, ISl-l, he was a student at Burlington Col- 
lege, for on that day he saw with a spy-glass the fight between 
McDonough and the British fleet, on Lake Champlain. For some 
reasons he did not graduate at this college, but at Dartmouth, in 
the following year."* 

^ The following anecdote of his college life whilst at Burlington 
is from Alexander Hood's sketch of Mr. Stevens : " The cam- 
pus at Burlington College was not enclosed, and the cows of the 
citizens used to enjoy it as a pleasant pasture ground. Before com- 
mencement it was usual to give the people notice to keep their 
cows away until after commencement was over. The grounds were 
then cleared up, and everything kept in complete order, until the 
exercises were ended and the students gone to their homes. It 
happened that among the citizens of Burlington was a man, "a 
stubborn fellow, whom," as Stevens said " we shall call Jones." 
He would take no steps to keep his cows off the campus. One 

■""Hood's Sketch in Harris' Biographical History of Lancaster County, 
pp. 5il-3. 



11 A REVIEW OF THE 

night, about a week before tlie commencement, Stevens and a 
friend were walking under the trees in fro^^t of the college, 
when they saw one of Jones' cows within th^ prohibited lines. 
They knew the cow belonged to Jones ; they knew Jones let her 
go there in a spirit of deiiance to the students. After some dis- 
cussion it was agreed to kill the cow. 

" Among the students was a young man who kept himself aloof 
from most of the others. In a word, he had the reputation of 
being decidedly pious. This young man had a room in an out- 
house belonging to the college, where in spare moments he man- 
ufactured many things out of wood, which he sold to the people 
of the town, and to others. Among other tools he was knov/n 
to have an axe, and Stevens and his companion determined to use 
it in the execution of the cow. The axe was procured, the cow 
was slain, the axe returned, and the two avengers of the college 
dignity retired to rest. The next morning Jones was with the 
President making complaint about the death of his cow. An 
investigation was at once begun ; blood was found upon the axe 
of the pious, well-behaved student ; he denied the charge, but as 
there was no evidence against any other person, he was threatened 
with a public reprimand on the day on which he had expected to 
graduate with high honor. No doubt the young man suffered 
much, but Stevens and his associate suffered much more. They 
dare not inform against themselves, yet they could not see an 
innocent person punished for their misconduct. "What Vv^as to be 
done. After many conferences, without any result, Stevens sug- 
gested that Jones was not a bad man, but rather a high-spirited 
fellow, who would help them out of the scrape,' if they would 
throw themselves upon his mercy. This they resolved to do. It 
was the night before commencement day, when they had the 
interview with Jones. They made a clean breast of it, and 
offered to pay twice the value of the cow whenever they should 
be able to do so. Jones listened kindly ; told them not to dis- 
tress themselves about the price of the cow, and said he would 
fix it all next morning. True to his word, abotit nine o'clock 
Jones appeared, just before the proceedings were to begin ; told 
the professors that he was all wrong about the death of his cow, 
and that she had been killed by soldiers who were going down 
the river on a boat, and had no time to dress and remove the 
meat. This made all things right ; the pious young man v:as not 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 15 

expelled, but honorably acquitted of the charge. Stevens and 
Ills friend were ne^:er suspected. Some years afterwards, when 
Stevens was rising" ai the world, Mr. Jones received a draft for 
the price of the best sort of cow in the market, accompanied by a 
line gold watch and chain by way of interest. A year or two 
afterwards there came to Gettysburg, directed to Mr. Stevens, a 
hogshead of the best Vermont cider, and this was the end of the 
killing of Jones' cow." * 

Which of the professions Mr. Stevens may have made up his 
mind to study, in his passage through college, is not known. On 
one occasion, in an argument with an Arminian, concerning pre- 
destination, he evinced such an intimate accpiaintance Vvdth the 
writers and arguments of the Calvinistic school, that a friend was 
induced to put to him the inquiry : " Mr. Stevens, did you 
ever study with a view to the pulpit." The answer was : 
" Umph ! I have read the books." But no further information 
on that point was he able to elicit from him. 

After taking his degree at Dartmouth College, he prepared and 
set out in quest of employment, and at length found himself 
about the close of the year 1815 in York, Pennsylvania. Here 
he obtained a situation as assistant teacher in an academy taught 
by Dr. Perkins. Amos Gilbert, a very noted teacher, then re- 
siding at York, afterwards remarked of Mr. Stevens, that he was 
at that time " one of the most backward, retiring and modest 
young men he had ever seen," and besides spoke of him as being 
a very close student. Soon after his arrival in York, he began 
reading law, both morning and evening, when not engaged in teach- 
ing, under the instruction of David Casset, a prominent York 
County lawyer, and prosecuted its study with great zeal, utilizing 
thus the scraps of his time to a valuable purpose. During the 
period he was in this manner preparing himself for future life, 
an effort was made by the members of the bar to thwart the 
fulfilment of his designs, by the passage of resolutions, providing 
that no person should be recognized as a lawyer who followed 
any other vocation whilst preparing himself for admission.f 
The young student, however, never took any concern as regards 
the protest, but pursued the even tenor of his way, until he felt 
that he had mastered his studies. He therefore repaired quietly 

*Harris' Biographical History of Lancaster County, pp. 513-13.* 
fForney's Press, August 13, 18G8. 



16 A REVIEW OF THE 

to Bel Air, the county seat of Harford County, Maryland, wliile 
the court was in session, and made application to be examined. 
At that time Marjdand admitted all applicakts to the bar who, 
upon examination, were found to be qualified. The Court, Judge 
Chase of impeachment notoriety, appointed a committee, the chair- 
man of which, was Gen. Winder. The following is Mr. Stevens' 
description of the examination as given in Mr. Hood's sketch 
of him : 

" Supper was over, the table was cleared off, and the clock said 
it was half-past seven. Stevens was of course punctual to time, 
and shortly after, the Judge and the committee took their seats. 

* Are you the young man who is to be examined V asked the Judge. 
Stevens said he was. ' Mr, Stevens,' said the Judge, ' there is one 
indispensible pre-requisite before the examination can proceed. 
There must be two bottles of Madeira on the table, and the appli- 
cant must order it in,' The order was given, the wine brought 
forward, and its quality thoroughly tested. Gen. Winder began 
with : ' Mr. Stevens, what books have you read V Stevens replied, 

* Blackstone, Coke upon Littleton, a work on pleading, and Gilbert 
on evidence.' This was followed by two or three other questions 
by other members of the committee, the last of v.diich required 
the distinction between a contingent remainder, and an executory 
devise, which was satisfactorily answered. By this time the Judge 
was feeling a little dry again, and broke in saying : ' Gentlemen, 
you see the young man is all right, I'll give him a certificate.' 
This was soon made out and signed, but before it was handed 
over, two more bottles had to be produced. These were partaken of 
by a large number of squires and others, who were there attending 
court, Avho, as soon as the examination was concluded, came in and 
were introduced to the newly made member of the bar. 'Fip-Loo' 
was played then for a good part of the night, Stevens was then 
a green hand at the business. To use his own words, when he 
paid his bill the next morning, he had but $3,50 left out of the 
$45 he began with the night before,"* 

He left Bel Air early next morning, directing his course for 
Lancaster, and narrowly escaped a watery grave in crossing the 
McCall's Ferry Bridge, not yet completed. His horse became 
■frightened and would have fallen with its rider into the river, but 
for the presence of mind of one of the workmen who was engaged 

Harris' Biographical History of LancasteiT County, pp. 574-5. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 17 

upon the bridge. The same day he reached Lancaster by noon 
and dined at Slough's Hotel, then one of the headquarters of the 
old inland city ; and while his horse was resting he reconnoitered 
the place, and walked from one end of King street to the other. 
He had concluded, should Lancaster please him, to select it as a 
location for the practice of his profession. Not believing that the 
pl'ace suited one whose pocket was so near empty, he next deter- 
mined upon Gettysburg and started the same day for York, which 
he reached in the evening. The following day he arrived at the 
county seat of AdamsCounty where he began his legal career, with 
but few friends and little money. 

Mr. Stevens had now embarked in that career, in which to 
one devoid of amability and captivating address, time, patience 
and ability are all required to obtain marked success. Being 
unendowed in a high degree, with either of the former traits of 
character that pave the way in most instances to ordinary suc- 
cess, he had to depend upon patience and ability with whatever 
slight auxiliary fortune might interpose to aid him in his early 
struggles. But with all the force of intellect he could command, 
his patience was well nigh exhausted before anything turned up 
to assure him that his profession would afford him the ladder of 
life-ascent, which he had hoped to meet in it. It is very certain, 
at least, that the quality for which Job Avas distinguished had in 
his case nearly all become exhausted before he met Avitli any 
success commensurate with his anticipations ; as he stated to a 
confidential friend at a dance at Littlestown, that he could hold 
out no longer, and must select a new location. Destiny, how- 
ever, had resolved, that in his case, though reduced to the lowest 
depths of despair, the profession of the law, with its political 
accompaniments, should make up his career ; as the darkest hour 
of night is that before day-break, so it was with him. A day or 
two after the despondency of his condition had led him to ruminate 
in his mind a new location, a horrible murder was committed ; 
and none of the prominent lawyers felt inclined to undertake 
the defense of the accused. Mr. Stevens was retained and exerted 
his powers to the utmost in behalf of his client, although without 
being able to acquit him ; yet he brought to the trial of the cause 
such an an-ay of legal learning, so marshalled and arranged ; and 
he handled the evidence with such masterly adroitness, that the 
com't, the bar, the jury, and the citizens were taken by surprise. 



13 A REVIEW OF THE 

His speech "before the jury evinced a mind of such logical acnte- 
ness, that the trial ended with his reputation fixed as possessing 
the elements of an able lawyer. This trial, and the masterly de- 
fense, became at once the subject of conversation throughout the 
whole country. His client was found guilty of murder and exe- 
cuted, but the case brought Mr. Stevens a fee of $1,500, which 
was the beginning of his fortune. He had already ascended the 
first step of the ladder of life. From this period there was no occa- 
sion that he must content himself with cases that the other law- 
yers saw proper to decline. He now began to receive a different 
class of clients than those to whom the other attornies semi- 
sneeringly had remarked, " there is a young man in town by the 
name of Stevens who may, perhaps, be willing to attend to 
your case." 

Persons were no more fearful to employ the club-footed lawyer, 
as he thenceforth came to be known by those who were not yet 
much acquainted with him. But his success must depend upon 
his own efforts, for the seemingly instinctive jealousy of lawyers 
precluded his receiving any favor from which they could debar 
him. Regarded as an interloper by most of them, he was thrust 
aside from all the favors which bars have in their power to ex- 
hibit, and their reflection was that if he succeed it must be by 
dint of superior ability .tud application to business. But 
Mr. Stbi-ens was one of those who could, in a remarkable 
measure, divest himself of all appreciation of the petty and con- 
temptible jealousies of human nature. He could afford to despise 
all such, and yet give no exhibition of his feelings. As, however, 
he felt that his success must depend upon the impression he would 
continue to make upon the people, he studiously applied himself and, 
to the best of his ability, to the preparation for trial of every case 
with which he was entrusted. It was soon perceived by the 
people of the county that he was able to try a case with as much 
success as any lawyer at the Gettysburg bar. His reputation all 
the time wiis spreading, and his business increasing. His great 
candor in everything he said, or undertook, made at once a favor- 
able impression upon those v,'ith whom he came in contact. Be- 
sides, his freedom from all affectation and pride procured for him 
the confidence of the German citizens of Adams County, although 
unable to converse with them in their vernacidar language, a con- 
fidence which he ever afterwards was able to retain. The ready 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 19 

humor he could make use of in his intercourse with the people 
or his brethren of the bar, and his sallies of wit, with which he 
could often disconcert an opposing attorney in the trial of a 
cause, were additional weapons which in his setting out in legal 
life were of incalculable service to him. 

His legal business rapidly increased on his hands, and by the 
year 1821 he made his first appearance in the Supreme Court, 
holding its session at Chambersburg, then one of the five places 
at which the highest Court of Pennsylvania sat. It is somewhat 
remarkable, in view of his latter political course, that his first 
case in that court should have been a suit de homine rejylegiandoy 
in which the liberty of a colored woman and her children were 
concerned. But as lawyers have not the choice of sides in a ease, 
in this instance, Mr. Stevens found himself compelled to dispute 
the claim for freedom. Henry Butler and Charity his wife, and 
their children had brought suit for their liberty, and Stevens was 
employed for the defense Their claim grew out of a contract 
between the ovrner of Charity and a man named Cleland, both 
Marylandors. Cleland again entered into another contract with a 
Mr. Gilleland, living in tho same State, concerning the services 
of Charity. Gilleland having deserted his wife, the latter was 
obliged to turn seamstress, and went occasionally into Pennsyl- 
vania, taking Charity with her. After returning to her mother's 
domicil in Maryland, she sent Charity back to her original master, 
being then eleven years of age. It became a question of fact for 
the jury to determine upon the trial, whether Charity had ever, at 
one time, been kept six months in Pennsylvania. If she had been 
so detained, she was then entitled to her freedom, as also her 
children. The jury returned a verdict against her freedom. 
The case was taken to the Supreme Com-t, but Mr. Stevens suc- 
ceeded in sustaining the verdict of the court below.* At this 
period he was established in a profitable practice. Prom the year 
1823, he was engaged on one side or the other, of all the im- 
portant suits of his County, of which fact the report books of 
the period afford abundant evidence. 

By 1827, he was become a man of influence and standing in his 
county, and owned therein considerable real estate. His fame had 
now far passed the bounds of Adams County, and he was hence- 
forth employed in the trial of important causes, in the neighboring 

*7 Sergeant & Rawle, pp. 379. 



20 A REVIEW OF THE 

counties of Cumberland, Franklin and York. His business now 
almost engrossed his whole attention, but he was not unmindful 
of the necessity of exercise. He was in the habit of riding much 
upon horseback, and became known as one of the most skilled 
equestrians in his section of country. He was fond of attending 
the races in Maryland, then one of the customary amusements of 
the day. His contiguity to Maryland and the numerous suits in 
which he was concerned, involving the liberty of colored persons 
claimed as slaves in the State of Maryland, had no doubt much to 
do in giving him his strong bias in opposition to the institution of 
African Slavery. As far as can be gathered, he always seemed to 
sympathize with the colored race, and was ready to assist them in 
gaining their freedom when in his power to do so. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 21 



CHAPTER II. 

EISE OF THE ANTI-MASONIC PARTY. ELECTION OF MR. STEVENS TO THE 
LEGISLATURE OF PENNSYLVANIA. 

Yf e have seen that Mr. Stevens, first selected in his mind the 
County of Lancaster for the practice of his profession, but after 
visiting it, came to the conclusion to go to Gettysburg. Both 
these choices would seem to imply that he was not altogether 
unmindful of political considerations in choosing a location. 
But belonging to a party, w^hose principles had become gen- 
erally unpopular throughout the nation, we do not find him 
participating in political affairs for many years after his settle- 
ment in Adams County. He was not the man to change his 
principles for the sake of success ; and it was only when new 
questions began to be discussed that he stepped forward upon the 
political arena. 

The excitement aroused, throughout the ]N^orthern States, 
against the Masonic order, occasioned by the abduction and exe- 
cution of William Morgan, in the Autumn of 182G, had the 
effect of reorganizing parties upon a new basis in many States of 
the Union. Morgan, a citizen of Batavia, ]^ew York, had pre- 
pared for publication, a work detailing the secrets of the three 
first degrees of masonry, and had the same in press, when the 
fact became known amongst the members of the Masonic order. 
As subsequent developments seemed to indicate, steps were con- 
certed in the I^ew York lodges to thwart the exposure of the secrets 
of an order, to which many of the most influential and respectable 
men of the nation had united themselves. Morgan was accord- 
ingly seized by members of the Masonic order in broad daylight, 
and borne by conveyance to the northern part of the State of Kew 
York, where all trace of him was lost. It was believed that he 
was sunk in Lake Ontario. The news of this transaction was 
soon spread throughout the country, but it was in Western New 
York where the highest degree of excitement prevailed. Com- 



23 A REVIEW OF THE 

mittees of investigation and safety were aj^pointed to ferret out 
the mysteries of a transaction that impressed the people with the 
conviction that a vital stab was inflicted npon American civil 
liberty. Prosecutions were also instituted against the conspira- 
tors in the Morgan tragedy, but these resulted in the acquittal of 
all except Bruce and Whitney, who were imprisoned for theii 
participation in the affair. 

The trials that took place, perhaps more, even than the abduc- 
tion of Morgan itself, intensified the excitement. The courts were 
crowded when the trials were in progress, and although many of 
the witnesses were masons of admitted respectability and stand- 
ing, it was believed by the people, that they testifled falsely in 
order to shield their brother masons from punishment. This was 
the allegation that they would do so, and the boasts of certain 
masons were retailed, who had declared that their friends would 
not be allowed to sufl^er. In America, then, as it was charged, 
was an institution that dared in the light of day to arrest a citizen 
and execute him, and the civil lavv' was powerless to prevent the 
wicked and diabolical deed. What more could the Invisihle 
Tribunal of Germany, or the Spanish Inquisition do, than was 
nov;' witnessed in Republican America ? Was an order to be per- 
mitted to exist in the United States, that would dare the pei-pe- 
tration of such high handed iniquity as was enacted in this 
instance? The excitement diffused itself from the locality of 
the occurrence of these scenes throughout the whole North. A 
party arose, styling themselves Anti-Masons, in the following 
year, which cast 33,000 votes in New York State for their candidate 
for Governor, and in 1828 this number was increased to Y0,000. 
In this last named year, the party had obtained some foothold in 
Pennsylvania; newspapers being established in this State in 
favor of Aiiti-Masonic principles. Men from both the old politi- 
cal parties attached themselves to the new organization, though it 
is not to be denied, that the greater number by far were Feder- 
alists, whose party was become quite defunct. 

Amongst the foremost in Pennsylvania, to espouse the principles 
of the Anti-Masons, was Thaddeus Stevens, who saw in the new 
party, the means of rising in political life. He no doubt hated 
an institution that had rejected, as is said, his admittance as a 
member ; and besides he saw that it might be combatted with 
advantage to his party. He began to denounce the Masonic 



POLITICALXONFLICT IN AMERICA. 23 

order as an iinperlutn in imperio^ a power that set tlie laws of 
the land at detiance, and nullified the system of the civil tribunals. 
If Masonry be permitted to endure, argued he, how can a mem- 
ber of the order be brought to trial, when one Mason in accord- 
ance with his obligations, is required to support another, in all 
difficulties, "whether right or wrong," and hold his secrets inviolable, 
" murder and treason not excepted." He declared that it was 
impossible to remain in doubt as to how he should act when 
American liberty was subjected to such peril from an institution, 
the power of which he perceived to be governed and supported 
by the credulity of ages. The courts of justice, trial by jury, 
the sanctity of the witness stand were all able to be set at naught, 
as he averred, by men who felt that the obligations of Masonry 
were more binding upon their consciences than the judicial oaths 
of the land. In co-operation, therefore, with others, he used all 
his efforts to consolidate the Anti-Masonic opposition in Pennsyl- 
vania into a political organization, that might prove effective in 
overthrowing a society of oath-bound enemies of the body politic. 
In the year 1829, the opposition to the Democrats, was united as 
the Anti-Masonic party, and supported Joseph Eitner for the 
gubernatorial chair of Pennsylvania. He was defeated, but in some 
counties of the State, the party was strongly in the ascendant. 
The war of opposition, that was henceforth waged against the 
Masonic institution, was a severe and trying one. ■ Books expos- 
ing the secrets of the order were in great demand. Bernard's 
Light of Masonry, Morgan's Illustrations, and other works of like 
character, obtained a wonderful circulation. Masonry soon sunk 
below par. By the year 1830, it was ascertained that over one 
thousand Free Masons had withdrawn from the order, and ex- 
posed the secrets of initiation. The seceding masons fully cor- 
roborated what was contained in the books divulo'ino;' the secrets 
of Masonry, and averred that the oaths therein set forth, 
w^ere the same identically as those which the initiated were 
required to accept. This was fully made out in the Le Roy con- 
vention of seceding masons, held in July, 1828, in the State of 
]N^ew York. Men of the highest respectability and social stand- 
ing deserted the order like a sinking ship, and proclaimed that 
youthful curiosity had induced them to unite with it, (as is the 
case with most intelligent young men entering it) but that they 
had not visited a lodge for many years, John Q. Adams, Wil- 



24 A REVIEW OF THE 

liam Wirt, Moses Stuart, of Andover, Caldwallader Golden, and 
a host of tlie first men of America, expressed publicly, their dis- 
approbation of the order. The lodges all over the country were 
closed, and so continued for years. Masonry was required to pass 
through a searching ordeal. Its history was examined to the 
foundation by able scholars, and its claims of antiquity shown to 
rest upon the assertions of credulous members, but for which 
truth furnished no basis. The origin of speculative Masonry, was 
traced to the year 1717 in England, and the averments of a more 
ancient deduction, were proved to be entirely fabulous. 

Mr. Stevens, having the sagacity to perceive that Free Masonry 
and all other secret societies were of anti-republican tendency, de- 
nounced the same as such. In his denunciation of these he was 
not far astray. These societies had derived their birth under 
monarchial governments, and seemed to exhibit the natural incli- 
nation of mankind to recur back in principle to the ancient form 
of policy, which republics should seek to overthrow. Deducing 
their principles from the aristocratic feelings of superiority which 
one class of people entertain towards another, it was apparent that 
Masonry was but laying the foundation for kingly rule, and the 
ruin of republican liberty. Even the names of the officers in the 
lodges, indicated this fawning after the titled appellations of 
monarchial rulers. As our republic prohibited its countrymen 
from the assumption of titles, that are conferred by the crowned 
magnates of Europe., secret societies afforded to the aristocratic 
fawner that which his heart craved, but which the laws of his 
country prevented his assuming in the light of day. All this 
Mr. Stevens -saw with clearness, and hence believed that the out- 
side prejudice could be united with admirable effect as to himself 
against the initiated. 

Entertaining these notions, and conscious of the antagonism 
which the new movement would be compelled to encounter in 
the battle against Masonry, Mr. Stevens, from the organization of 
the Anti-Masonic party in Pennsylvania, actively labored to cosi-" 
solidate, and give it national strength and diffusion. In September, 
1831, he was a member of the Baltimore National Convention of 
the Anti-Masonic party, which placed Wm. Wirt and Amos 
Ellmaker, in nomination for the Presidency of the United States. 
But the election of 1832, resulted disastrously to the hopes of the 
Anti-Masons, but one State casting its electoral votes for their 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 25 

candidates, Mr. Stevens' mountain home of Vermont. It was 
now believed by many, that the party could never succeed as a 
national organization. The Southern States had kept aloof from 
it, and the N^orth was unable to imite vipon Anti-Masonic princi- 
ples. Five years had elapsed since the excitement occasioned by 
the Morgan abduction was first aroused ; and yet the paity had 
so far been unable to achieve any substantial victory. Large 
numbers of individuals, who had united with the new organization, 
merely from political motives, now became apathetic, as regards 
its future permanency, and were ready to attach themselves to 
any other that would show indications of greater success. Like 
vultures, the politicians are endowed with remarkable nasal organs 
for scenting the official carcass. But, four years must now elapse 
before another presidential struggle could take place ; and in the 
meantime each State must manage its political affairs in accord- 
ance with the judgment of their respective leaders. In Pennsyl- 
vania, the Anti-Masonic organization was kept up perhaps better 
than in most others ; and yet here many visible signs existed that 
the seeds of party dissolution were not confined alone to the other 
States of the Union. It is believed that Anti-Masonry, as a party 
organization, was prolonged in Pennsylvania through the influence 
of Thaddeus Stevens more than that of any other man that could 
be named. 

In the fall of 1833, Mr. Stevens was elected to the lower 
House of the Pennsylvania. Legislature, taking his seat in De- 
cember of that year. The legislative session of 1833—1, was a 
most important one, insomuch as the system of free schools was 
first introduced into Pennsylvania in its enactments. The free 
school bill passed at this session, and which was approved by 
Gov. "Wolf, April 1st, 1834, received the warm support of Mr. 
Stevens. The measure itself was the outgrowth of the intelli- 
gent thought of the age, stri\'ing for the discovery of the best 
method by which to enlighten the masses, and fit them for 
citizenship in a free republic. It was but the expression of the 
united intelligence of the patriotic public citizens of Pennsyl- 
vania, who desired the weKare and improvement of the people 
of their State. 

The American system of free schools is of ISTew England 
birth, and dates its origin to an early period in the history of the 
Eastern States. Massi\chusetts and Connecticut are rivals if ' the 



25 A REVIEW OF THE 

honor of its discoveiy. Pennsylvania was slow in accepting the 
system, althongh her people were far from being averse to edu- 
cation. In their efforts for the advancement of general intelH- 
gence, her statesmen, with that deliberation and caution, which 
are characteristics of the people of Pennsylvania, sought for the 
best S3'stem of schools that could be obtained, and which had as 
yet been tried. When the Constitution of 1790 was adopted, it 
was made an article of that charter, that " the Legislature as soon 
as may he, shall provide hy law for the establishinent of schools 
throughout the State, in such maimer that the poor fnay he 
taught gratis^ In accordance with this constitutional provision, 
it was early enacted, that the tuition of all poor children attend- 
ing school should be paid out of the public treasury. But this 
plan did not seem to meet the necessities of the demand for 
general instruction, as most persons needing assistance had a re- 
luctance to being enrolled as paupei*s upon the school lists ; and 
the question how to remedy the defect, became more and more a 
matter of discussion amongst educated men. The attention of 
philanthropists in all parts of the country was directed to this 
subject shortly after the close of the war with Great Britain ; and 
the best methods of education were discussed. Improved schools 
were in the year 181T, established in many of the principal 
American cities, and their influence did much to educate the 
public up to a knowledge of the advantages of a general system 
of free education. 

The Governors of Pennsylvania, being men of cultivated 
minds, and surrounded by such, seeing the current of advancing 
intelligence in other States and countries, were in their messages, 
in the habit of calling the attention of the Legislature of the 
State to the necessity of providing means for a more general 
system of public instruction. Gov. AVolf was particularly dis- 
tinguished as the advocate of a free school system, and in his 
message of 1833, he urged the measure in the strongest terms. 
The subject was taken up in both houses of the Pennsylvania 
Legislature, and the result was, that a free school bill was passed 
in both, and received the sanction of the Executive. The law 
went into operation, but met with furious resistance in many 
sections of the State ; indeed, in all parts, a party arose in opposition 
to the law of 1834. The majority of the heavy tax-payers in 
all quarters of the State were opposed to a law that abstracted 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 27 

money from their pockets, as tliey conceived, without any justice 
or right, save the enactment of the Legishiture. Tlie advantages 
of elevating communities to a condition of intelligent citizen- 
ship vp-ere overlooked. Again, the law was opposed by many, 
because the system severed religious from intellectual instruction; 
and withdrew the education of the youth from the supervision of 
the clergy and other church authorities. It was this latter objec- 
tion, that induced the heavy opposition on the part of the German 
counties of the State, a resistance that required years to overcome. 
When the legislature therefore of 1834r-5, assembled, petitions 
began to pour in from all parts of the State, urging the repeal of 
the school law that had been passed the year before. On tlie 
17th of March, 1835, it was reported in the House of Representa- 
tives, that 558 petitions, signed by 31,988 names were before that 
body, asking that the school law of 1834 be repealed, whereas but 
49 petitions with 2,575 signers were in its favor. All the outside 
pressure seemed to demand the repeal. A bill, revoking the 
school law of the last year, was introduced into the Senate, 
passed that body, and was transmitted to the House for its con- 
currence. Speech after speech was now made in the House, in 
favor of what seemed almost the universal sentiment of the people. 
Many short-sighted members, who had even favored the free 
school law, were ready to vote for its repeal, as they feared to 
place themselves upon record as supporters of a law which the 
public, in their petitions, seemed so emphatically to have con- 
demned. Politicians are timid, and fear to support a measure, 
that their constituents have reprobated, much as their judgment, 
might approve it. Thaddeus Stevens was this year a member of 
the Legislature of Pennsylvania. His New England birth and train- 
ing made him naturally inclined to favor the free school system. 
He had the sagacity likewise to perceive that it would receive" 
the support of the poorer classes, much as it might be combatted 
by the wealthy. It belonged to the equalizing movements of the 
age, which seemed to hannonize with American ideas. Mr. Ste- 
vens therefore boldly resisted the repeal, in a speech of great 
ability and force, delivered in the House. It was a fine oppor- 
tunity to become the champion for the elevation of the masses 
at the expense of the monied classes. Such championship, in 
America, ever secures for the demagogue high applause, whether 
deservedly or otherwise. Mr. Stevens espied his own gain in his 



£8 A REVIEW OF THE 

strong defense of tlie free school system, as lie perceived tliat he 
was tlius making himself the leader of the people, in opposition 
to the opulent few. 

In him, the people and the timid free si-hool men found a 
leader. His speech had a magical effect upon the sentiments of 
members. Such a masterly, argumentative, and convincing array 
of tliought, as they conceived, had not been heard in the Pennsyl- 
vania halls of legislation for years. A master intellect had simply 
defended the growing popular sentiment. All without distinction, 
whether enemies or friends, acknowledged the overpowering 
superiority of the speech. Many who had determined to favor the 
repeal, changed their opinions, and voted to sustain the law of 
1834. The House decided to non-conciiir in the action of the Sen- 
ate, and thus the common school law was saved to the common- 
wealth. This speech ranked its author, henceforth^ as one of the 
first intellects of Pennsylvania. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 29 



CHAPTER III. 

MASONIC INVESTIQATION, STAR CHAMBER COMMITTEE. CHARTER OF THE 
UNITED STATES BANK OF PENNSYLVANIA. MEMBER OF STATE 
REFORM CONVENTION. 

The political tide of Anti-Masoniy was somewLat broken in 
the Presidential election of 1832. But this, instead of weaken- 
ing, seemed rather to have had the effect of enhancing the force 
of the moral onslaught which was made against the institution of 
Masonry, and which, throngh the courage and intellectual superi- 
ority of Thaddeus Stevens, became more intense in Pennsylvania, 
perhaps, than in any other State of the Union. The legislative 
warfare in this State was begun in March, 1823, in the presenta- 
tion in the House of Rspresentatives, by a Mr. Diesbach, of three 
memorials from sundry citizens of the Commonwealth, setting 
forth that the society of Free Masons had become dangerous to 
the free institutions of the Commonwealth, and that men who 
are members of the order, are wholly incompetent to act as jurors 
and arbitrators, in cases wherein a Free Mason and another citizen 
are parties. The memorialists prayed for some legislation that 
would afford the requisite relief in such cases. Oiiher petitions 
of like character were also presented, all of which were laid upon 
the table. In this manner, the people, year after year, sent their 
petitions to the Legislature, asking for some law to remedy the 
evils of Masonry. 

When Mr. Stevens took his seat as a member of the lower 
House of Representatives at Hamsbnrg, the Anti-Masons found a 
leader competent to marshall the party in the Legislature, and cope 
with the ablest opponents that might be arrayed against it. He 
was but a short time in the House, until he had an opportunity 
of proving his capacity for leadership, in a speech delivered by 
him in which he took occasion to review the course of the Jack- 
son party, and the men who molded its principles. As the antag- 
onist of Masonry, on February 10, 1834, he introduced the 



30 A REVIEW OF THE 

following resolution : 

" Eesolved. That a committee be appointed to inquire into the expedi- 
ency of providing by law for making Free Masonry, a good cause of per- 
emptory challenge to jurors in all cases, where one of the parties is a 
Free Mason, and the other is not, and on the part of the Commonwealth, 
in all prosecutions for claims and misdemeanoi's, where the defendant is a 
Mason ; and alSo, where the jvidge and one of the parties are Free Masons, 
to make the saine provisions for the trials of causes as now exist where 
the judge and either of the parties are related to each other by blood or 
marriage, and to make the same i^rovison relative to the summoning and 
return of jurors, where the Sheriff and either of the parties are Free 
Masons, as now oxists where they are related to each other by blood or 
marriage, and that said committee have power to send for persons and 
papers." 

On the second reading, on the question shall the resolution as 
offered pass, the vote was yeas, 34, nays, 45. By this vote the 
Anti-Masons were shown to be incapable of effecting any legisla- 
tion of a party nature. Mr. Stevens, as chairman of the com- 
mittee appointed to investigate Masonry, on the 2Ttli of March, 
1834, submitted the following report : 

" Wliereas, Numerous petitions, signed by a large number of highly 
respectable citizens of this Commonwealth, have been presented to the 
Legislature, stating their belief that the masonic fraternity is associated 
for purposes inconsistent with the equal rights and privileges which 
are the birth-right of every freeman ; that they are bound together by 
secret obligations and oaths, illegal, immoral and blasphemous, subver- 
sive of all public law, and hostile to the full administration of justice. 
They ask for a legislative investigation into tlie truth of these charges, 
a.nd, if supported, a legislative remedy ; and for the purpose of obtaining 
authentic proof, they ask for the appointment of a committee to send for 
persona and papers. 

" In pursuance of wliat was supposed to be the prayer of the peti- 
tioners, a committee was appointed and the petitions refeiTed to them. 
The committee met and organized, and, supposing it to be their duty to 
proceed to investigate the charges made against the Masonic institution 
thus referred to them, they gave a precipe for a subpoena for vvat- 
nesses to the Clerk of the House, to be by him issued in the usual way, 
signed by the Speaker. The committee would not deny their right to 
inquire into the the truth of the charges, for the investigation of which 
they had been specially appointed. Nor did they suppose they had been 
commanded by the House to perform that duty without being clothed 
with the power asked for by the petitioners, and indispensably necessary, 
and incident to its faithful and intelligent discharge. The Clerk and 
Speaker of the House thought otherwise, and declined issuing the sub- 
l>oena. The committee appealed to the House to grant explicitly the 
questioned power. It was objected to, on the gi-ound (among others) that 
it would subject refractory witnesses to punishment for contempt if they 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 31 

refused to testify ; a power which the House seemed disposed not to 
pursue towards masonic witnesses. To obviate this objection, the com- 
mittee consented to modify the resolution, so as to give them power to 
take the testimony of sucli witnesses only as would appeal* to testify 
voluntarily before them. But the House, by a vote of eveiy member 
present, except two, of all parties, not politically opposed to Masonry 
refused the request. The committee were thus prohibited from ascer- 
taining by legal testimony the true char.' cter of Free Masonry as prac- 
tised in Pennsylvania. Nor could they fail to view that decision as a 
plain intimation by the House of their unwillingness to have the secret 
designs, principles and practices of that institution established and made 
known to the people. Feeling themselves bound by that intimation, and 
trusting it with the respect which is always due to the wish of this body, 
the committee feel themselves constrained not to make use of the proof 
within their power, taken in other States to develope its alledged iniqui- 
ties. Such proof might and would be met with the allegation, that it 
^' might h: New York, but not Pennsylvania Masonry.'" To establish the 
identity of Pennsylvania and New York Masonry by a legislative com- 
mittee, vested with adequate power, is left to a future time and other 
hands. To suppose that this will not soon take place, would be a foul and 
unwarranted libel on the intelligence and firmness of the freemen of this 
Commonwealth. 

"To shoAv the necessitj' of tlie power asked for, and to justify their 
failure to make a more extended report on the subject confided to them, 
the committee will briefly state the nature and quality of the test'mony 
which they had intended to submit to this House. That the evidence 
might be above suspicion, they had determined to call before them none 
but adhering Masons who could not be suspected of testifying out of 
kostility to the institution. To leave no doubt as to the character of the 
witnesses, it was proposed to examine the Masonic members of this 
House and the Cabinet. It was particularly desirable and intended that 
the Governor of this Commonwealth should become a witness, and have 
a full opi)ortunity of explaining under oath, the principles and practices 
of the order of which he is so conspicuous a member. It was thought 
that the papers in his possession might throw much light on the question 
how far Masonry secures political and executive favor. This inspection 
would have shown, whether it be true that applications for olfices have 
been founded on Masonic merit and claimed as Masonic rights ; whether 
in such applications the ' ' significant symbols " and mystic watch words 
of Masonry have been used, and in how many cases such applications 
have been successful in securing executive patronage. It might not have 
been unprofitable, also, to inquire how many converted felons, who have 
been pardoned by the present Governor, were brethren of the " mystic 
tie," or connected by blood or politics with members of that institution, 
and how few of those who could boast of no such connection have been 
successful in similai applications. The committee might have deemed it 
necessary, in the faithful discharge of their duty, to have called before 
them some of the judges, who are Masons, to ascertain whether, in their 
official character, the " grand hailing sign " has ever been handed, 
sent or thrown to them by either of the parties litigant, and if so, what 



32 A REVIEW OF THE 

has been the result of the trial. This would have been obviously proper, 
as one of the charges against Masonry is its partial and corrupt influence 
in coui'ts of justice. Who the witnesses were to be, was distinctly an- 
nounced to this House by the chairman of the committee on the disscussion 
of his resolution. The House decided that no evidence should be taken; 
every member of the Masonic institution present voting in the negative. 
The committee have deemed this brief history of legislative proceedings 
necessary to justify them for failing to make a report which is anxiously 
looked for by the people. The committee are awai-e that most of those 
who opposed the power to send for " persons and papers," did it on the 
avowed grounds that it was unnecessary, as the principles of Masonry 
were fully disclosed and known. For themselves, the committee have 
no hesitancy in saying, that Masonry is no longer a secret to any but 
those who wilfully make it so, and that its principles and practices are as 
dangerous and atrocious as its most violent opponents have ever de- 
clared. They take pleasure, however, in saying that a great majority of 
its members reject its doctrines, habitually disregard its principles, and 
in honesty, honor and patriotism, are inferior to none of their fellow- 
citizens. It is the duty of government, while it looks with charity and 
forbearance on the past, to take care that in futui'e none of our respecta- 
i>le citizens should be entrapped into such degrading and painful thral- 
dom. To effect this object and give those who x^rofess to be morally 
opposed to Masonry an opportunity to record such opposition, the com- 
mittee report a bill '* to proJiibit in future the adminis 'ration of Masonic, 
Odd Felloio, and all other secret extra-judicial oaths, obligations and 
promises in the nature of oaths." 

As parties were constituted in the legislature, Mr. Stevens had 
no further object in the submission of the above report than to 
place upon record the demands and views of the Anti-Masonic 
party. In the session of 183t(r-5 the AntiMasons were again in 
the minority in the legislature. Mr. Stevens being a member of 
the House at this session also, considerable discussion took place 
and there was the usual display of partizan tactics regarding the 
question of Masonry. Mr. Stevens submitted a motion in the 
House, prefaced by a lengthy preamble, detailing in varied items 
the evils' of Masonry and which contained a resolution " that the 
Committee on the Judiciarrj he instructed to hiding in a hill 
effectually to suppress and pi'ohibit the administration and recep- 
tion of Masonic, Odd Fellow and all other secret extra-judicial 
oaths^ obligations and promises in the nature of oaths P This 
resolution was without delay laid upon the table and authority to 
publish the same was denied by a vote of 38 yeas to 58 nays. 

During the controversy waged throughout the country over the 
question of the removal of the deposits by President Jackson, 
Joseph R. Ritner was nominated for the governorship of Penn- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 33 

sylvania, distinctly as an Anti-Mason, and tlirougli the division of 
the Democratic party was elected, A majority was chosen to the 
House of Representatives favorable to the same principles as the 
Governor was supposed to represent, Mr. Stevens was again 
returned as a member from Adams County. Governor Eitner, in 
his inaugural, expressed the sentiments of his party upon the 
Masonic question, and spoke of his election as an endorsement of 
Anti-Masonic principles. He said: 

*' The supremacy of the laws, and the equal rights of the people, whether 
threatened or assailed by individuals, or by secret sworn associations, I 
shall so far as may be compatible with the constitutional power of the 
Executive, endeavor to maintain as well in compliance with the known 
will of the people, as from obligations of duty to the Commonwealth, 
In these endeavor ; I shall entertain no doubt of zealous co-operation by 
the enlightened and patriotic legislature of the State. The people have 
Willed the destruction of all secret societies, and that wiU cannot be dis- 
regarded." 

, At the legislative session of 1835-6, on motion of Mr. Stevens, 
a committee was appointed to investigate the evils of Free Ma- 
sonry and other secret societies. This was that to which the Free 
Masons and their allies gave the name of the " Star Chamber 
Committee^'' because of the attempt to extract information 
from the Masons themselves, which as was believed, would be 
prejudicial to the order. Subpoenas were accordingly served upon 
Gov. WoK, Geo. M. Dallas, Francis E, Shunk, Joseph E. Chand- 
ler, and a number of the other distinguished lights of Masonry, 
citing them to appear before the committee and answer such 
questions as might be asked them touching their knowledge of 
Masonry, The questions as agreed on in connnittee to be pro- 
pounded to the. parties subpoenaed Avere the following : 

1. "Are you, or have you been a Free Mason ? How many degrees have 
you taken ? By what lodge or chapter were yoii admitted ?" 

2. "Before or at the time of your taking each of those degrees, was an 
oath or obligation administered to you ?" 

S. "Can you repeat the several oaths or obligations administered to 
you, or any of them ? If so, repeat the several oaths, beginning with 
the entered apprentice, and repeat them literally, if possible, if not, 
substantially ; listen to the oaths, and obligations, and penalties, as read 
from this book (AUyn's Ritual) and point out any variation you shall find 
in them from the oaths you took. Is there a trading degree ?" 

4. "Did you ever know the affirmation administered in the lodge or 
chapter ?" 

5. "Are there any other oaths or obligations in Masonry than those 
contained m Allyn's Ritual and Bernard's Light on Masonry ?" 



Gi A REVIEW OF THE 

6. "Is Masomy essentially the same everywhere ?" 

7. "State the ceremony of initiation in the R. A. degree, and particularly 
whether any allusion is made to the scripture scene of the burning bush. 
State fully how that scene is enacted in the lodge or chapter." 

8. "Are you a K. T.? If so, state fully the obligations and ordinances 
of that degree. In that degree is wine administered to the candidate 
out of a human skull ? State fully the whole scene. Listen to the 
account of it as read from this book (Allyn's Ritual), and point out 
whether it varies from the genuine oath or ceremony." 

Most of those subpcenaed sent to the committee written replies, 
declining to appear &nd answer in obedience to the writ ; some 
of them appeared in person before the committee and read their 
^reasons for refusing to answer any questions concerning Masonry, 
and their connection therewith. Their reasons for declining to 
answer, as gathered from their several replies, embraced sub- 
stantially the following. They claimed that the House of Eep- 
resentatives possessed no constitutional anthority to institute an 
inquiry concerning any organization within its borders, or its 
secrets, that violated no law of the land. If their society, or 
any other, was proved to have become injurious to the rights of 
the commonwealth, in that event, the paramount superiority of 
the State must subordinate all others. But until this be shown, 
the State had no more right to interfere than would it have to 
institute an inquiry concerning any private family affairs. Ma- 
sonry existed when the constitution of the State was lirst formed, 
and no objection was made against it ; and they claimed it, as 
one of those natural and indefeasible rights 's^iJlich men possess, 
to unite together in the pursuit of their own happiness. Again, 
were it conceded that the Masons had been guilty of any infrac- 
tion of law, the proceedings contemplated the compulsory crimina- 
tion of the accused, a principle violative of constitutional privil- 
eges. Enact, however, a " constitutional law," as Joseph R. 
Chandler remarked in his reply to the committee, " j)rohibiting 
the existence of Masonic institutions, and I shall be the first to 
withdraw from all communion with the order, without reference 
to the weight of penalties, and shall feel bound to bear testi- 
mony in a court of justice against any Mason who might, within 
my knowledge, violate the statute." 

The committee asked authority of the House to commit those 
subpoenaed for contempt, but this, after considerable disputation, 
was refused. The cowardice of some who professed Anti-Masonic 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. ' 33 

principles, and tlie influence and standing of the parties cliarged 
with the contempt, shielded the recusant witnesses from the im- 
prisonment w^hich some, and amongst those Mr. Stevens, were 
ready to inflict. Thaddeus Stevens was the soul and leader of 
tliis movement, and in it showed himself equal to any emergency 
when his party should summon his services. For his participa- 
tion in this undertaking, he subjected himself to great obloquy 
and abuse from the members of the Masonic order and their 
adherents. But the movement, on the part of Mr. Stevens, was 
in itself sufficient to stamp him as a man of w^onderful mental 
stamina and courage ; and were nothing else of his public services 
extant, this itself would record him among the famed names 
of history. One man in this case, by the potent strength of his 
intellectual superiority, sets up an investigation to overthrow an 
order that claimed an existence from the building of Solomon's 
Temple, and wliich the whole power of the Roman Catliolic 
Hierarchy and Priesthood had essayed in vain to destroy. Had 
public opinion been a little more ripe for the attempt, it is un- 
known what results the investigation migli*: have had. Secret 
societies are never too strongly entrenched in public sympathy to 
escape censure. The exclusive (never popular), in a free country, 
must ever And itself an exotic, and be ranked with that wholly 
anti-republican in its nature. Its development displays the aristo- 
cratic feelings of humanity, severs the people into classes, and 
ultimately flts nations for governmental changes. Had the asso- 
ciate partisans of 'Mr. Stevens, who espoused the Anti-Masonic 
cause, done so with equal ardor as himself. Free Masonry in Penn- 
sylvania, and perhaps in America, would in the main have ceased 
to exist. It does not, however, seem to have been high moral 
reasons that caused his opposition to Free Masonry ; but rather 
because deformity had precluded his initiation into the mysteries. 
But as it was, the order met a shock that will not soon be for- 
gotten. And while Free Masonry in the United States is 
altogether likely to continue to be molded by the spirit of our 
institutions, in order that it may still defer the crusade, which 
(If our republic be resurrected) seems destined, in the march of 
ages to eradicate it, with all the other relics of superstition and 
monarchy. 

The session of the Pennsylvania Legislature of 1835-6, was 
an important one in more respects than one. The charter of 



36 A REVIEW OF THE 

the United States Bank would expire on the -ith of March, 1830. 
The political contest, regarding this institution, had been one. of 
violent and impassioned intensity. From the first intimation by 
President Jackson, in his message in 1829, of his doubt as to the 
constitutionahty of the bank, the people were divided in senti- 
ment regarding it. Upon the appearance of the President's 
Message, the stock fell six dollars per share, but whr n Congress 
expressed a contrary opinion, the stock rose to a higher figure 
than before. The affairs of the bank moved smoothly as before, 
but in view of the expiration of its charter in 1836, its stock- 
holders in 1832 applied for a renewal of national banking privi- 
leges. The bill for the re-charter of the bank passed both Houses 
of Congress, but met resistance in the veto of President Jackson* 
This action upon the part of the Executive had the effect of 
arousing in Pennsylvania (where the bank was located and was 
popular) a furious resistance against the national administration ; 
and it was for a time believed that the President's policy would 
not be sustained by the people of this State. A very large meet- 
ing was held in Philadelphia, in July, 1832, soon after the veto 
of the bank bill, which was composed of the President's former 
political friends, at which resolutions were adopted disapproving 
of his course, with regard to the bank, and deprecating his re- 
election to the Presidency as a national calamity, against the 
occurrence of wdiich, they pledged themselves to use their utmost 
efforts. 

The hostility thus arrayed against the President had the effect 
of embittering him against the bank and its supporters. In view 
of the uncertain financial condition of the bank, the President, 
in his Message of December, 1832, recommended the withdrawal 
of the public funds from the institution. Congress, on the con- 
trary, by resolution expressed its entire confidence in the solvency 
of the bank. William J. Duane, the Secretary of the Treasury, 
in whose province it was to see to the removal of the deposits, if 
in his judgment necessary, declined removing them, and he was 
accordingly removed from the Secretaryship, and Roger B. Taney 
appointed in his stead. The deposits were now removed, 
and a period of financial stringency set in, which greatly em- 
barrassed the trade and business of the country. All this, in the 
opinion of the President and his friends, was the result of the 
improper conduct of the managers of the United States Bank. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. S7 

The bank question remained for years one of the great subjects 
of national politics, and by it, perhaps, parties then were more 
molded than by any other. It was a fruitful theme of discussion 
for many years. 

When it was fully discovered at length, that a national charter 
for the United States Bank could not be secured, its friends con- 
ceived the idea of a State incorporation, in order to save the ex- 
piring bank from impending dissolution. Thaddeus Stevens was 
the admitted Achilles of the bank party in the Pennsylvania 
Legislature. lie was accordingly selected by the stockholders as 
the man to champion in the Legislature the application for a State 
charter of the LTnited States Bank. On the 19th of January, 
1836, he presented in the House of Representatives a bill for the 
charter of the bank, with a capital of $35,000,000, which met 
violent opposition from the Jackson party in Pennsylvania and 
all over the country. It nevertheless passed both Houses of the 
Legislature, and haying received the approbation of the Gov- 
ernor, became a law. A leading inducement with the advocates 
of the charter was, that the State was to receive a bonus of several 
million dollars from the stockholders for internal improvements. 
The resistance to the State charter manifested itself not only in 
the denunciations of the Jackson press, but even in the legisla- 
tion of some of the States. Ohio passed a law in March, 1836, 
prohibiting within the limits of the State any branch of the 
Pennsylvania United States Bank. The institution thus chartered, 
purchased the assets, assumed the liabilities of the old United 
States Bank, and continued its business under the same roof. 
But the new bank was unable to resist the adverse tide of finan- 
cial affairs, that was gradually approaching to a crisis. This set 
in fully by 1837. All the banks in the Union, with few excep- 
tions, suspended specie payments. A resumption was attempted 
in 1839, but was only persevered in by the banks of Kew Eng- 
land and New York. This new suspension, however, was not 
generally followed by contraction of the currency in Pennsyl- 
vania until 1841, when another attempt was made to resume, 
which proved fatal to the United States Bank of Pennsylvania. 
It was now obliged to go into liquidation. 

In the fall of 1836, Mr. Stevens was returned a member of the 
Heform Convention, which was fixed by the Legislature to be 
ehosen in November, the same time as the Presidential electors. 



38 A REVIEW OF THE 

Tlie calling of the convention to amend the constitution of Penn- 
sylvania, had been for years a question of discussion, and was 
decided in 1835, by a majority of 13,000 in favor of the call. In 
1825 the people had voted in opposition to a convention by a 
majority of 15,000. Among the members chosen to the body, 
were some of the ablest intellects of Pennsylvania. Some of 
these made lasting reputations from the part they bore in the 
deliberations of that body. The convention assembled at Ilarris- 
burg, May 2nd, 1837, and entered upon its duties of amending 
the fundamental charter of the State. Mr. Stevens took a seat 
in this convention, in the fullness of his intellectual vigor, and 
with a reputation as one of the ablest men in the commonwealth. 
At the opening of the deliberations, he assumed the position that 
his consciousness of ability dictated as his place, and should a 
larger share of hypocricy been part of his character, he would no 
doubt have been able to wield much more influence in the work- 
ings of the convention than he found it in his power to do. Jeal- 
ousy soon manifested itself on the part of several members, who 
were ready to measure swords witli him, as regards intellectual 
superiority. His readiness to express his opinions proved a source 
of weakness to him, and oft exposed him to thrusts from his 
competitors, which otherwise he might have avoided. Unlike 
most politicians, his nature prompted him to avow what he sin- 
cerely believed ; and this trait made him appear to those who 
have no convictions singular and erratic. 

He was placed by the president of the convention as chairman 
of one of the principle committees ; but his great readiness to 
assert his opinions, and some sweeping measures of reform, which 
he was prepared to advocate, alarmed those even of his own 
political party, so that he soon sunk from the rank of a deviser 
and arranger of reforms, to be simply the disputant of those 
already submitted. Much weaker men than he were those, as a 
consequence, who suggested and carried through, by their mild- 
ness and amiable manners, the reforms that were adopted by the 
convention. Padical men like Mr. Stevens, are never popular in 
any body; and though they may do at times what none else 
could accomplish, it is because they happen to De in entire accord 
with the sentiments of those whose influence and votes they 
require. The agitator is mostly in the minority, and so it was 
with Mr. Stevens in the convention of 1837-8. It is not, there- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 39 

fore, in any particular measures that lie proposed and caused to 
be adopted, that he made his mark in this body, but rather in the 
bold stand he in the main assumed, in the defense of what he 
regarded as right. 

Although belonging to the party in opposition to the Demo- 
crats, he was too violent an Anti-Mason to be popular with the 
Whigs, now risen to considerable political importance in the 
country. This branch was the rising sun of the opposition party, 
whereas Anti-Masonry was that which was setting. IS^o cordial 
affiliation had as yet taken place between the two wings, and as 
a consequence Mr. Stevens was far from being popular with the 
Whigs of the convention ; indeed some of his most bitter assail- 
ants belonged to this branch of the party. In the advocacy of 
his plan of representation, which would limit the largest city to 
six representatives, he reiterated Jefferson's sentiment, that cities 
are ^^ sores of the hody politic, ^^ and strongly advocated his views 
before the convention. This induced a severe attack from Wm. 
M. Meredith, of Philadelphia, Avherein he applied to him some 
cutting remarks, and though conceding his great ability, yet 
designated him as the '■''great uncJiained of Adains^'' and attached 
to him other slurring appellations. Mr. Stevens' reply upon this 
occasion evinces liis power of rejoinder, and as indicating this is 
inserted : 

" The extraordinary course of the gentleman from Philadel- 
phia has astonished me. During the greater part of his concerted 
personal tirade, I was at a loss to know what course had driven 
him beside himself. I could not imagine on what boiling cauld- 
ron he had been sitting to make him foam with all the fury of a 
wizzard who had been concocting poison from bitter herbs. But 
when he carne to mention Masonry, I saw the cause of his grief 
and malice. He unfortunately is a votary and a tool of the 
'■Hrnxdmaid^ and feels and resents the injury she has sustained. 
I have often before endured such assaults from her subjects. But 
no personal abuse, however foul or ungentlemanly, shall betray 
me into passion, or make me forget the command of my temper, 
or induce me to reply in a similar strain. I will not degrade 
myself to the level of a blaclcguard to imitate any man, however 
respectable. The gentleman, among other flattery, has intimated 
that I have venom without fangs. Sir, I needed not that gentle- 
man's admonitions to remind me of my weakness. But I hardly 



40 A EEVIEW OF THE 

need fangs, for I never make ofEensive personal assaults; how- 
ever, I may, sometimes, in my own defense, turn my fangless 
jaws upon my assailants with such grip as I may. But it is well 
that with such great strength that gentleman has so little venom. 
I have little to hoast of, either in matter or manners, but rustic 
and rude as is my education, destitute as I am of the polished 
mannei*s and city politeness of that gentleman, I have a suffic- 
iently strong native sense of decency not to answer arguments 
by low, gross, personal abuse. I sustained propositions which I 
deemed beneficial to the whole State. Nor will I be driven from 
my course by the gentleman from the city, or the one from the 
county of Philadelphia. I shall fearlessly discharge my dut)^, 
however low, ungentlemanly and indecent personal abuse may be 
heaped upon me by malignant wise men or gilded fools." 

When upon the presentation by Mr. Denny, of a petition from 
sundry free citizens of color of Pittsburg, remonstrating against 
the adoption of any clause in the new constitution, depriving the 
free colored citizens of the right of suffrage, and when objection 
was made to its reception, Mr. Stevens spoke as follows : 

" I maintain that those who have petitioned this body, whether 
white or black, liave a right to be heard, whether on this or any 
other subject relative to tlie business of the convention. We 
have a right, then, to give the prayer of the petitioners a respect- 
ful consideration." 

The question of suffrage before the convention, gave rise to 
considerable discussion. The constitution of 1790, had confined 
suffrage to freemen ; and as slaves then existed in Pennsylvania, 
it was generally held that colored persons were not intended to 
be included under the expression of freemen. However, as time 
advanced, and the spirit of hostility to slavery grew stronger, 
there were those in the State who claimed that all free persons 
were meant, and even in some few counties negroes were permit- 
ted to vote, though in the most of them this was not attempted. 
In large cities the attempt would have been attended with dan- 
ger. The question had been already decided by some of the 
courts that the constitution of 1790 limited suffrage to the white 
race. 

When, therefore, this subject came up in the convention, it was 
moved to incorporate the word white in the section, fixing suff- 
rage, Avhich led to an animated debate, the convention being 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 41 

somewhat, tliough not entirely, divided on tliis point by pai'ty 
lines. Tte Democrats were almost a unit in opposition to negro 
suffrage. But not all of the other party favored it. Wm. M. 
Meredith, a Whig, remarked : " That he knew no good reason 
why they (the negroes) should be admitted into the political 
class. They never had been admitted into it. * * * The 
right of suffrage ought to be the privilege of white citizens 
alone." Mr. Stevens, though a bitter opponent to the word 
white, yet took no special part in the discussion. It was at that 
time a very unpopular question ; petitions were pouring in from 
all quarters of the State in opposition to negro suffrage, and the 
strong supporters of such a measure would have become marked 
men. This Mr. Stevens seemed to recognize, and may have acted 
upon the reticent list in view of public opinion. If on this occa- 
sion he played politician, it was, no doubt, under the strong 
rebukes of conscience, for his iirm faith in human equality would 
have prompted him to be the staunchest resistant to the intro- 
duction of the word white in the suffrage section. When the 
first discussion on this question was before the convention, he was 
present, but was absent in January, 1838, when the first vote was 
taken introducing the discriminating word. Mr. Stevens, in this 
instance, evinced much of his real nature ; for while he desired 
to be regarded as the bold defender of principle, he had that 
much of corrupted nature as to keep an eye upon his future 
political success. 

During the last days of the convention, he attended the 
sittings of the Legislature at Harrisburg ; having been elected to 
the Lower House in October, 1837. And when the new Consti- 
tution was completed, he declined to append his signature to it, 
because of the incorporation of that distinction of suffrage which, 
for some reason, contrary to his nature, he had not the boldness 
to battle. Thus far, ambition alone can be supposed as that which 
triumped over principle, othewise he should have pronounced 
some philippics that might have enhanced his rej^utation as an 
agitator, but which in that event miglit forever have bolted 
against him the doors of the National Congress. 

Not long after the adjournment of the Legislature in 1838,- 
Gov. Ritner appointed Mr. Stevens one of the Board of Canal 
Commissioners, John Dickey and a Mr. Pennebaker being the 
other two members. One of the enterprises that drew upon 



43 A REVIEW OF THE 

Mr. Stevens much odium as a member of the Canal Board, was 
liis advocacy of the Gettysburg Raih-oad, wliich he was charged 
by his pohtical opponents as favoring, because of its passing his 
furnace in Adams County. It was a measure, however, that had 
received the warm support of Gov. E.itner ; but with the Demo- 
crats this in no wise shielded Mr. Stevens, as he was regarded 
upon all hands as the controlling spirit of the Ritner adminis- 
tration. The Governor was viewed simply as a puppet in his 
hands, and his messages as but the dictations of the power behind 
the throne. The Gettysburg Railroad was designed to unite 
with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, then in process of con- 
struction. The tortuous route that it was necessrry to take in 
order to unite the points contemplated by railway, was what gave 
this road the nickname of the " Tape-worm?'' An appropriation 
was secured, and the route was surveyed, and considerable sums 
of money expended upon its construction. The road was in- 
spected by the committee during the legislative session of 1837-8, 
one from the House of Representatives, and the other from the 
Senate. Both committees reported adversely to the completion 
of the road. The Senate, at that time, had a majority of its 
members of Mr.- Stevens' own party. John Strohm, a Whig 
Senator, was Chairman of the Senate Committee, from whose 
report some extracts are submitted : 

" The Gettysburg Railroad, commencing at Gettysburg and extending 
to a point at or west of Hagerstown, in the State of Maryland, is but an 
isolated link which can never become useful or profitable until the Balti- 
more and Ohio road, to be extended to Pittsburg or Whee ing, and the 
Railroad from Gettysburg to ihe Columbia Railroad at Wrightsville are 
completed. That poi-tion of the latter which lies between Wrightsville 
and York, about twelve miles is in progress. Between York and Gettys- 
burg an experimental survey has been made, but no permanent location 
fixed ; and it is the opinion of many that an early completion of the said 
road by the company need not be expected, 

"It is evident, therefore, that no certainty can be attained, either in 
regard to the location or time of completing the Baltimore and Ohio 
Railroad. Would it, then, be consistent with cautious prudence and 
sound policy to persevere in expending millions in constructing a work, 
the utility of which is dependant on such precarious and doubtful cir- 
cumstances V " 

The Committee reported that, in their opinion, the objects 
sought for by the Gettysbur Road, would much more advantage- 
ously be obtained by adopting the route through the Cmnberland 
Valley, by way of Chambersburg. The Gettysburg Road, in 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 43 

crossing tlie Sontli Mountain, was obliged to select sncli a meand- 
erin.o: line, tliat it was not strano-e that it secured its surname of 
the " Tape-iuonn." On the aspect of this road the committee 

say : 

"But on the latter (the Gettysburg road) for about twenty -five miles, 
the traveler is either ascending or descending at the rate of fifty feet to 
the mile, a rugged, solitary and barren mountain, uninhabited and almost 
uninhabitable ; on the one hand he sees perpendicular cliffs rise like tower- 
ing steCides above his head, covered with projecting rocks which threaten 
him with instant death for his temerity ; on the other, he perceives a 
frightfvil precipice, over which he is in eminent danger of being hurled 
into the abyss below, with the certain prospect of being dashed to pieces 
by the fall. Now he is whirled over a ravine, or an embankment of some 
fifty or -sixty feet in height, and now engulphed in an excavation from 
which he can scarce see the sun ; or immured in a tunnel where daylight 
may enter but cannot penetrate. The slightest accident must expose 
him to danger of life, limb and property, from which nothing but a 
miracle can save him." 

!Near half a million of dollars were expended upon this road, 
through the influence of Mr. Stevens, as was charged by his ene- 
mies, and as it from the first concentrated the hostility of the Demo- 
cratic party when David R. Porter came into power, the road was 
abandoned. It, however, was one of those projects that clung to 
Thaddeus Stevens throughout life, and like the poisoned ^ij'it of 
ISTessus, would have proved a fatal tunic to a weaker man, or, 
perhaps, to any other than himself. 



a A REVIEW OF THE 



CHAPTER rV. 

THE BUCKSHOT WAR. 

The event tliat will ever be known in tlie history of Pennsyl- 
vania as the "Buckshot War," and in the seanes of which Thad- 
dens Stevens bore a conspicuous part, to be nnderstood must be 
traced from its inceptive causes. At the general election, held on 
the second Tuesday of October, 1838, the people of the County 
of Philadelphia voted for two Senators and eight Representa- 
tives, besides other officers. The highest Democratic ' candidate 
for the senate, C. Brown, received 10,036 votes, while W. Wago- 
ner, the highest on the Whig ticket, had but 9,190 votes. On 
the representative ticket the Democrat who polled the lowest 
vote had a majority of 385 over the highest Whig candidate. 

Charles J. Ingersrol, the Democratic candidate for Congress, 
had run several hundred votes behind his ticket, and as the vote 
in his district was counted, he Was defeated. It was averred, on 
the part of him and his friends, that vast frauds had been perpe- 
trated in the district of the Korthern Liberties. Articles imme- 
diately began to appear in the public journals and in handbills, 
calling upon the people to be ready to assert their rights, and 
urging upon them to attend at the meeting of the return judges, 
at the State House, in Philadelphia, on Friday after the election, 
in order to see that justice be done them and their friends. Tliis 
at once aroused public attention, and at the meeting of the return 
judges, Mr. Ingersol and his friends appeared and demanded that 
they be heard in defense of his claims. The board of return 
judges numbered seventeen, representing the same number of 
districts : ton Democrats and seven Whigs. Mr. Ingersol claimed 
the privilege of proving that certain irregularities liad taken 
place at the polls in the Northern districts, and after considerable 
discussion this right was granted by a party vote of the return 
judges. Having proved that the law had been violated at one of 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 45 

the polls in tlie N^ortliern Liberties ; and as tins wliole district 
voted in one building, it was demanded by Mr. Ingersoll and his 
party friends, that the wliole vote of the Liberties be excluded. 
This vote amounted to about 5,000, and its rejection would have 
the effect of electing the Democratic candidate for Congress, but 
in no wise altered the result as regards the candidates for tho 
Senate and House of Kepresentatives, save that it increased the 
Democratic majorities. The Democratic return judges, having 
the majority of the board, decided infavor of Mr. Ingersol's claim, 
and the vote of the Northern Liberties was rejected. The Whigs 
entered their protest against this action of the majority, but were 
powerless to prevent it. They contended that the board of return 
judges had no legal authority to exclude the vote of any district, 
and that this power was vested in other tribunals. But as the 
majority thought otherwise, duplicate returns were made out and 
signed by the ten judges, which elected the two Democratic 
Senators and the eight Representatives, one copy of which was 
deposited in the Prothonotary's office, as the law required, and 
the other was placed in the post office, directed to the Secretary 
of the Commonwealth. After this the six Whig return judges, 
in conjunction with the one from the city of Philadelphia, met 
in another room of the State House, and they also prepared and 
signed duplicate returns of the votes polled in seven of the seven- 
teen election districts of the County of Philadelphia, The one 
of these returns they in like manner deposited in the Prothono- 
tary's office, and the other they handed to the Sheriff, who sent 
the same by express on a steam engine to the Secretary of the 
Commonwealth. This last return came first into the hands of 
the secretary; and on this account, induced it would seem by 
partisan, logic, he chose to consider as the only legal one. 

The Whigs assumed to believe that the Democrats, in casting 
out the vote of the ISTorthern Liberties, were guilty of a fragrant 
outrage, and that dissenting as they did from the majority return, 
no other remedy was left them save to act as they had done. The 
Democrats, on the other hand, claimed that the minority return 
was intended to force into the Legislature, as sitting members, 
ten defoated Whig candidates from the County of Philadelphia ; 
and by their votes before they could be removed by contesting 
their election, to pass laws, to elect the Canal Commissioners, a 
United States Senator, and other officers. The fear was even 



46 A REVIEW OF THE 

expressed tliat tliey would contest the Governor's election and 
declare Ritner re-elected for three years longer, and thus set the 
will of the people at defiance. That the honorable leaders of 
either party desired anything but what was fair, is hardly pre- 
sumable, much as the partisans of each may have desired to 
advance their own interests. But it was about this time in the 
history of Pennsylvania, when the most daring displays of politi- 
cal corruption lirst began to be witnessed. The corruptionists of 
each party were ready to advance their cause by any means what- 
soever, and the upright and conscientious men of either organiza- 
tion Avere made to believe that the fraud all attached to their 
oj^ponents. As the election of 1838 had been warmly contested, 
and as both parties had felt confident of victory, and had wagered 
large sums of money on the result, it was not reasonable to sup- 
pose that the defeated would yield the contest, when fraud was 
believed to have contributed to their overthrow. Accordingly, 
Thomas II. Burrows, the Secretary of State, and who was also 
chairman of the Whig State Committee, no doubt, after con- 
ference with his party counsellors, issued on the 15'fh'day of 
October, a few days after the election, the following address to 
the friends of Joseph Ritner : 

"Fellow Citizens: — The general election has resulted in a manner 
contyary to all our reasonable calculations and just expectations. The 
opponent for the oflfice of Governor appears to be elected hj at least 
5,000 majority. This is an event to which, if it had been fairly produced, 
we, as good citizens, Avould quietly, if not cheerfully, submit. But there 
is a strong probability of malpractice and fraud in the Avhole transaction 
that it is our duty peacefully to resist it and fully to expose it. 

"The election has been characterized by features altogether unparall- 
eled in the history of our State politics. A few of those of a more 
general nature may be here instanced. 

"Wlien the returns from all the counties shall be received, it will 
probably be found that the whole vote given for Joseph l.itner, on the 
9th instant, is greater than tliat which he received in 1835 by a number 
at least equal to the natural, regular and legal increase of votes in the 
whole State in three years. It will a' so hi found that liis friends in 
nearly every county polle 1 fully as manj^ votes as they before the elec- 
tion expected to do, upon the strength of which expectation a reasonable 
estimate gave him a majority of 10,000. Then grave questions arise. 
Whence came the majorities returned for his opponent ? And how can 
he be defeated who has so well sust lined himself with the people and so 
largely increased his vote ? It will be discovered that in the districts 
where the friends of Joseph Ritner had the control of the elections, a 
moderate increase of votes for him, arising from sufficient and well- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 47 

known causes, took place ; while in the same districts his opponents had 
fair play and polled their full number of legal votes. On the other hand, 
it is known to all that in the districts in which the inspectors and judges 
were the friends of Mr. Porter, not only were the friends of Joseph Rit- 
ner in many cases wliolly excluded from voting, but his opponents admit- 
ted without shadow of right, thus swelling the majorities of Mr, Porter 
even beyond the wild expectations and extravagant calcu ations of his 
own friends. Is it right that this state of things (the existence of which 
each voter will determine by facts known to himself) should be submit- 
ted to in a free country ? 

" Finally it is known that in several counties in which our opponent? 
had the control, the votes of whole districts, favorable to our candidate, 
were without shadow of law or justice, wholly rejected, and false and 
l^artial returns made. Can there be anj' safety under republican institu- 
tions if such high-handed opp essioa be tolerated? No ! We owe it to 
ourselves as free men and good citizens, to examine into this matter, and 
if fraud be detected to expose and resist it. We owe it to our country 
and posterity. 

" On behalf, therefore, of the State Committee of Correspondence and 
Vigilance, the propriety is suggested of taking measures at once for in- 
vestigating the manner in which the election was conducted and the 
result prH need. Now is the time to make the examination while the 
facts are l'r-:ah and the outrage recent. Let it be done then peacefully, 
determinedly and thoroughly. But let it be commenced Avitli an honest 
resolution to submit to the result whether it be favorable or unfavorable 
to our wishes. This is the duty of all who contend for equal rights and 
the supremacy of the laws. 

^'- But, fellow citizens, until this investigation he fully made and fairly 
determined, let us treat the election of the Wi instant as if we had not 
been defeated, and in that attitude abide the result. 

"In the meantime your State Committee will take all proper measures 
on the 9ccasion, and when the whole facts are known and the returns 
received, will probably address you more at length." 

This address, issuing from sncli autlioritj, was accepted by the 
Democrats as a threat of revohition, and taken in connection with 
the return of the minority judges of Philadelphia, had the effect 
of arousing partisan passion to its higliest pitch of intensity. 
From that time till the meeting of the Leo;islature in December, 
the anticipated action of each party at that period was a subject 
of discussion in the party journals, and preparation was made by 
each for the probable colision that (as was believed by many) would 
take place. As the time approached for the meeting of the 
Legislatm-e, the active partisans began to flock to Ilarrisburg to 
be witnesses of the scenes that were about to transpire, and also 
to see that their i)arty friends obtained their constitutional rights. 
By December 3d all the hotels were crowded, and bullies and 



48 A REVIEW OF THE 

rouglis of botli parties were parading tlie streets of the capitol, 
loudly boasting what thej wonkl do in case their respective 
parties were unjustly treated. Thaddeus Stevens, all this 
time, was the centre of influence Math his party friends, and the 
principal object of malediction with the Democrats. The Whigs 
and Anti-Masons looked to him for advise in all their movements, 
while their opponents could see in him nothing but the incarnation 
of all iniquity, fraud and corruption, against which they were 
compelled to contend. The chief of tl]« fallen angels himself, was 
almost as honorable a character in the estimation of the violent 
Democratic partisans, as was Thaddeus Stevens at this time. 
He, the contriver of the whole plan for revolutionizing the State 
goverment and securing ascendancy for his party, could be noth- 
ing better than an arch-fiend, and many a threat escaped the 
mouth of A swaggering politician that he should bite the dust for 
his treasonable designs against the rights of the people. 

The memorable morning of the 4th of December, 1838, the 
day fixed by law for the assembling of the Legislature, found 
the adherents of both parties anxiously waiting the hour for the 
House to assemble. The hour of meeting was 11 A. M. Long 
before this time the hall, the galleries, aisles and lobbies were 
crammed with members and spectators almost to suffocation, wait- 
ing the time for the organization of the House. Bowie knives and 
pistols were in the pockets of a large number, who had come from 
Philadelphia and the public works, in order, as they fancied, to 
see justice done to their party friends. The matter in dispute 
seemed well understood, not so well the cause of it. All, how- 
ever, recognized that the diffculty was concerning the Philadel- 
phia County delegation to the Senate and House of Representa- 
tives. This was about all that was generally understood; the 
merits of the dispute had dot yet been closely inquired into. 
When the hour of eleven struck, the Clerk called the House to 
order, and Thomas H. Burrows, Secretary of the Common- 
wealth, stepped forward and handed that oflicer the Philadel- 
phia returns, which, contrary to custom, he had up to this time 
failed to deliver. This was the occasion for some manifestation 
of disapprobation in the galleries, Mr. Charles Pray, one of the 
Democratic contesting members, from Philadelphia, rose and 
handed the clerk a certified copy of the returns made by the 
majority of the return judges, and desired also that it might be 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 49 

read. Mr. T. S. Smith, anotlier Philadelphia member, protested 
against the reading of a docimient thus irregularity presented. 
The law prescribed the officer by whom all returns must be 
made ; and coming from any other they were illegal and void. 
After some discussion, both returns were allowed to be read, and 
afterwards the returns from the east of the State were read with- 
out opposition. The contesting members of both political parties 
were thus, as it were, admitted ; and the House was now ready 
for organization. Counting the eight contesting members, each 
party had a majority. Thos. B. McElwee, of Bedford, next rose 
and moved that the House proceed to elect a Speaker, which 
motion was adopted. All this time great confusion reigned. 
Scarcely was the voice of the clerk, wdien calling the names of 
the members, audible above the din that prevailed through the 
whole hall. Wni. Hopkins, of Washington County, was now 
nominated for Speaker, and the tellers were aj^pointed. Here- 
upon, Thaddeus Stevens arose and named as Speaker, Thomas S. 
Cunningham, of Beaver, and having appointed tellers, immedi- 
ately put the motion and declared his candidate elected, who pro- 
ceeded to the speaker's stand and took the chair. He was greeted 
by his partisans with tumultuous applause when he reached the 
speaker's seat. A like election on the part of his partisans 
declared Mr. Hopkins Speaker of the House, who mounted a 
chair ancj began to address the multitude. Thos. B. McElwee ad- 
vanced to him and escorted him to the speaker's platform, and 
gently removing Cunningham with his elbow, placed the Demo- 
cratic Speaker in his seat. This in turn was greeted by vocifer- 
ous cheering by those who saw in this act the advantage gained 
by their party. Both Speaker's were now sworn by their parti- 
sans, and thereupon Mr. Cunningham assumed to adjourn the 
House till 2:30 P. M. next day. The Cunningham members now 
retired, and afterthe transaction of some unimportant business, the 
Hopkins House also adjourned until next day at 10 o'clock. The 
'^rowd now gradually dispersed ; the Democrats, however, took the 
{j. . caution to leave some trusty guards in possession of the capitol, 
in order to retain possession of the advantage they had gained. 

Both parties now returned to their several hotels and boarding 
houses, some chagrined and others jubilant over wdiat had trans- 
pired. After dinner had been partaken of and the all-engrossing 
subject for a short time discussed, the leading politicians began 



50 A REVIEW OF THE 

to wend tlieir way to the Senate cliamber, wliicli body was to 
organize at 3 o'clock. Like the hall of the House had been, 
when the clock struck three, the Senate chamber was a perfect 
jam. "W^hen the clerk called the Senate to order, Mr. Burrows, 
the Secretary of the Commonwealth, handed to him the return 
of the minority judges from the County of Philadelphia. At 
this point the crowd gave vent to some tokens of disapprobation, 
after which the roll was called and the Senators answered to their 
nameg. A Mr. Hannah was one of the Senators from Philadel- 
phia who was returned by the Whig judges as elected. When 
his name was called and he was about to be sworn, the utmost 
confusion prevailed. The crowd broke over the lobbies, and 
some of them mounted chairs and began to speak. Charles 
Brown, one of the contesting Senators from Philadelphia, at- 
tempted to address the Senate, but was called to order as not 
being a member of the body. This excited his partisans in the 
crowd, and the shout was raised : " Hear him," " Brown," 
" Brown," " You shall hear Brown." These and similar out- 
bursts of excitement now for a moment rent the hall. For a 
time all single voices were drowned in the universal clamor and 
confusion which prevailed. Gen. Ro^lgers, of Bucks, a member 
of the Senate, rose and moved that Mr. Brown be permitted to 
address the Senate. Brown now addressed it and the crowd at 
considerable length, and all the while the tumult i-emained 
unabated. All this time Penrose, the Speaker, kept his seat and 
endeavored to preserve order to the best of his ability, but to no 
pui-pose. It was now near seven o'clock in the evening. During 
all this tim.e Stevens had been in the hall, and was regarded by 
his political enemies as the spirit that animated and inspired 
confidence in tho hearts of his partisans. Penrose, iinding his 
efforts to preserve order fruitless, beckoned to Gen. Rodgers to 
take the chair, he retiring behind the desk. About this time, 
Stevens perceiving that the waves of faction already resistless 
were still surging with greater intensity, desired to make his 
way out through the crowd, but was unable to do so. He went 
back to the fire-place and while standing there, was told by a 
friend that it was intended to kill him if he w-eiii out by the door. 
It was then suggested that he and Burrows should leave by the 
window of the room, near the fire. As it was too perilous a 
descent to leap out of the window, they crept out by means of a 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 51 J 

lamp ligliter's ladder, which liad been obtained by some of their 
friends, and secured against the back wall of the Senate Chamber. 
"While going out of the window tLie door of the room, opening at 
the end of the lobby stood open, and they were seen by some of 
the crowd. "Three persons, one of them with a long bowie 
knife in his hand, ran out through the crowd, swearing he would 

kill the scoundrel yet." * Had not these roughs mistaken 

the direction of the window they might, in the intensity of the 
excitement, have imbued their hands in blood. Penrose, about 
the same time, also made his escape. Shortly after the retreat 
of Stevens, Penrose and Burrows, the Senate adjourned. 

By this time the people of Harrisburg were in the midst of the 
greatest excitement and terror. Every moment it was now ex- 
pected that a collision between the parties might ignite the flames 
of civil war in their midst. Stevens, Penrose and Burrows Avere 
the triumvirate that received all the abuse of their political 
opponents for what had happened, or was likely to take place. 
As the preponderance of plebeian influence was possessed by the L 

Democratic party, it was already apparent that the Whigs had so 1 

far been necessitated to yield to its influence. Perhaps, even in 
this case, the vox populi was vox del,, much as reason might utter 
its dissent. Passion and patriotism now had free scope for dis- 
play. A mammoth rneetiiig of Democrats was held the same 
evening at the Court House in the Borough of Harrisburg, pre- 
sided over by Gen. T. C. Miller, of Adams County, assisted by a 
large number of vice-presidents. A number of stirring and 
inflamatory addresses were delivered at this meetiug by Col. J. J. 
McCahan, of Philadelphia, George W. Barton, of Lar. caster, and 
others. A committee was appointed to wait upon Thomas H. 
Burrows, and request him forthAvith to furnish to the clerks of 
the Senate and House of Reprentatives, the full and legal returns 
of the election for the County of Philadelphia, held on the 9th 
of October, 1S38. A Committee of Safety was also appointed, 
which Gen. Adam Diller, of Lancaster County, was made 
-iairman. The meeting then adjourned until next morning at 
lalf-past eight o'clock. 

After the adjournment of the Senate, Gov. Ritner issued the 
following proclamation : 



' Biographical History of Lancaster County, pp. 583. 



52 A REVIEW OF THE 

Pennsylvania, ss : In the name and hy the authority of the 
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania^ l>y Joseph Pitner, Gov- 
ernor of the said Commonwealth : 

" Whereas, A lawless, infuriated armed mob, from the Comities of 
Philadelphia, Lancaster, Adams, and other counties, have assembled at 
the seat of Government with the avowed object of disturbing, interrupt- 
ing and over-awing the Legislature of this Commonwealth, and of pre- 
venting its proper organization, and the peaceable and free discharge of 
its duties. And 

" Whereas, The said mob have already, on this day, entered the Senate 
Chamber, and in an outrageous and violent manner by clamoring, shouting 
and threatening violence and death of the members of that body and 
other officers of the Government, and finally, by rusliing within the bar 
of the Senate Chamber, and in defiance of every efi'ort to restrain them, 
compelled the Senate to suspend business. And 

" Whereas, They still remain here in force, encouraged by a person who 
is an officer of the General Government from Philadelphia, and are set- 
ting the law at open defiance and rendering it unsafe for the legislative 
bodies to assemble in the Capitol. 

" Therefore, This is to call upon the civil authorities to exert them- 
selves to restore order, to the utmost of their power, and upon the mili- 
tary force of the Commonwealth to hold tliemselves in readiness to repair 
to the seat of Government ; and upon all good citizens to aid in curbing 
this lawless mob, and in re-instating the supremacy of the law. 

•' Given under my hand and the great seal of the State, at Hamsbiu-g, 
this 4th day of December, in the year of our Lord, one thousand, eight 
hundred and thirty-eight, and of the Commonwealth the sixty-third. 

By the Governor. 

"Thomas H. Burrows, 
" Secretary of the Commonwealth." 

The Democratic citizens met pursuant to the adiournment at 
the Court House meeting at 8:30 o'clock A. M., of December 5th, 
and were again addressed at some length by the eloquent Col. 
J. J. McCahan. He exhorted them to use all peaceful measures, 
in order to secnre their rights. The Committee on Eesolutions 
submitted the following : 

" Resolved, That we recommend to the citizens generally to pursue a 
pi'udent and calm course, waiting the events of the day with that firm- 
ness which freemen in a free country have resolved upon. 

*• Besoivsd, That neither those in power, who endeavor to perpetuate 
their reign through unlawful and fraudulent returns, as citizen soldier.^, 
who have the same feelings and interests with us, will intimidate people 
resolved upon having their rights." 

At 10 o'clock, on "Wednesday, December 5th, the Hopkins 
House met pursuant to its adjournment, in the hall of the House 
of Eepresentatives, and elected their officers ; and after the trans- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 53 

action of some unimportant business, adjourned. About the 
time the House was adjourning, a rumor was afloat that the 
Whigs had taken possession of the arsenal with a hirge body of 
armed men. Some of the members, going to ascertain the truth 
of the rumor, found a hirge collection of men around the 
arsenal. Armed men were seen parading in the arsenal, with 
fixed ba_yonets. Gov. Ritner had issued oj'ders that a special 
guard should be detailed for the defense of the State property in 
the arsenal. The Democrats who surrounded the arsenal had a 
iield-piece and acted under the orders of the Committee of 
Safety, of Avhich Gen. Adam Diller was chairman. As they 
viewed affairs, the occupation of the arsenal was but part of a 
plan to coerce them into the relinquishment of their rights; and 
to this they determined to interpose whatever resistance the occa- 
sion might demand. The proclamation of the Governor, calling 
for troops, had now become known, and this now added fresh 
fuel to the flames. The Democrats demanded either the evacua- 
tion of the arsenal, or that it should be guarded by equal num- 
bers of both parties. This latter demand M-as refused, and as the 
parleying had already lasted for a considerable time, it was feared 
by many of the Wliigs that unless some compromise were effected 
a collision might ensue. At this point, George Ford, of Lancas- 
ter, and Joseph Henderson, called upon the Committee of Safety 
and represented themselves as deputed by Stevens, Ritner & Co. 
to confer in reference to the arsenal and the public property of 
the Commonwealth. Messrs. Ford & Henderson pledged them- 
selves, "that as men of honor, no ordinance, arms, muskets, or 
amunition, should by any order of the Governor, or any other 
authority whatever, be taken from the arsenal for the purpose of 
arming any forces that might collect in obedience to the proc- 
lamation of the Governor, and that if any use of them should 
be made they would hold themselves personally responsible for 
the consequences." 

The Committee of Safety thereupon despatched three of their 
number to advise the citizens of the pledge that had just been 
made, and the arsenal guard shortly afterwards consented that if 
the cjtizens would withdraw, they would evacuate the premises. 
Room being now made for the retreat, the garrison sallied forth 
at full run for Gleims' Hotel, the headquarters for the Ritner 
party. In the chase, one of the fugitives, a known bully, was 



5t A REVIEW OF THE 

overtaken by a Pliiladelpliian of like character, prostrated, and 
severely handled. As soon as the arsenal was evacuated, an im- 
mense crowd gathered in front of Gleims' Hotel, in which it wa, 
rumored that live hundred muskets were deposited. These mus- 
kets, it was averred, had been purchased in Philadelphia by 
Stevens and Burrows after the October election, and deposited in 
a room of this hotel for service on the present occasion. It was 
now past noon, and rain was falling in torrents npon the crowd, 
now swollen to an innnense size, in the streets and around the 
hotel. Col. Lewis Corryel and Col. Piolett addressed the multi- 
^ tude and calmed them by assurring them that no immediate dan- 
N§r of a collission now existed. The crowd after this, gradually 
\,n to disperse. 

soon as Mr. Stevens had heard of the negotiation made with 
the V mmittee of Safety, concerning the arsenal, by Ford and 
Henderson, he disclaimed, in a public letter addressed to the 
editor of the Pennsylvania Telegraph, as far as he was concerned, 
having authorized the parties to so negotiate. The following is 

the copy of the letter : 

" Harrisbueg, Dec. Gtli, 1838. 
" To the Editor of the Pennsylvania Telegraph : 

"Sir: — I undei'stand tliat a publication, issvied by authority of the 
rebel forces, who for two days past have had possession of the seat of 
government and the State Capitol, states that while such forces sur- 
rounded the arsenal, yesterday, and were threatening to force it open, a 
committee, consisting of Messrs. Ford and Henderson, sent by K tner, 
Stevens, Buitows & Co., pledged tlieir honor, that if the people would 
disperse no arms should be taken out of the arsenal by any per- 
sons, either in behalf of the government or otliers. I desire to contra- 
dict this statement, so far as it concerns myself. What Messrs. Ford and 
Henderson may have done, I know not ; but no man had any counte- 
nance from me, in either making or listening to any suggestions from 
the rebels on any subject ; nor do I believe that either of the gentlemen 
named authorized any such communication. I have uniformly said that 
I should deem it disgraceful to treat with the rebels on any subject, or 
do any act, either now or hereafter, on their demand. Such acts I should 
consider as disgraceful to myself, personally, and an infamous surrender 
of the rights of the people of the Republic. 

"Your obedient servant, 

" Thaddeus Stevens." 

The hall of the House of Representatives was securely guarded 
by the Democrats, dm-ing the M'hole of the 5th of December. 
The Cunningham House had completed its organization in a room 
of Wilson's Hotel, in the City of Ilarrisburg, now the Lochiel 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. 55 

House. As Cunningham liad adjourned liis House Mdien the two 
parties on the 4th divided in their organizations, until half-past 
two P. M. on the 5th, he directed a Mr. Spackman, of Philadel- 
phia, to proceed to the hall of the House of Representatives, and 
again adjourn it till the next day. Meeting Thomas B. McElwee, 
Spackman was asked by his political opponent, where he was 
going. Spackman replied, " to adjourn the House." McElwee 
told him he had no right to do so, as there was no House to 
adjourn, and started immediately for the Speaker's stand. Some 
one in the House (for the hall was again densely crowded) said to 
liim, " you will get a ball through your head jf you attempt to 
keep Spackman from the Chair." Spackman advanced to the 
platform, McElwee the second time demanded of him what he 
wanted, and the reply was, " to adjourn the House." The 
interrogator remarked that there was no House to adjourn. 
Spackman said, "the Cimningham House," to which McElwee 
told him he would not be permitted to do so. Great agita*-ion 
now prevailed throughout the hall. Some, supposing a collision 
iminent, raised the windows to make their escape if danger arose. 
Some cried out, " Spackman, adjourn the House from where you 
are." McElwee immediately remarked to some of the bystanders, 
*' gentlemen, remove this man from the hall." He was at once 
seized by the n«3n, and led to the door. While he was being 
conveyed out, he remarked to one of those leading him, that " he 
M'ould adjourn the House from a member's chair." The gentle- 
man assured him that if he attempted to do so he would not be 
responsible for his safety. Sj)ackman then retired from the hall. 
In the interval a rush was made, and the folding doors between 
the hall and rotunda were burst from their hinges, and many 
individuals leapt from the windows. Great confusion reigned 
for a short time, some attempting to speak, in order to cpiell the 
disorder. After some time the citizens again quietly disj^ersed, 
and the hall was once more almost deserted. 

Gov. Pitner, on the 5th of December, addressed a letter to 
E. V. Sumner, Captain of the United States Dragoons, at Car- 
lisle, urging him " forthwith to march the troops at your com- 
mand to Harrisburg, for the protection of the constituted authori- 
ties of the Commonwealth, for the suppression of the insurrection, 
and for the preservation of our Republican form of Government, 
agreeably with the Constitution of the United States." Captain 



53 A REVIEW OF THE 

Sumner, on tlie same day, replied to tlie Governor as follows : 

"As the disturbance at the Capitol of this State, appears to proceed 
from political differences alone, I do not feel that it would be proper for 
me to interpose my command between the parties. If this riot iiroceeded 
from any other cause, I would offer you the services of my command 
before you will receive this letter." 

On Friday, December Ttli, Gov. Ritner addressed the following 

letter to the President of the United States : 

Harrisburg, Pa., December 7th, 1838. 

" Sir : — It is my exceedingly unpleasant duty, officially to inform you, 
that such a state of domestic violence exists at this place, as has put an 
end for the pi-esent to all the regular functions of the State Government. 
The Senate of the State has been compelled, by imtimidation, to break 
up in confusion. The duly appointed jsresiding officer of the House of 
Representatives was prevented from calling the House to order, to which 
it stood adjourned, and was ejected from the hall by violence. The State 
Department is closed, and I have not deemed it safe or prudent to proceed 
to the Executive Chamber since the first disturbance, which took j)lace 
on the 4tli instant. 

"Under this state of things, I have thought it my dutj% to the good 
citizens of this Commonwealth, and to law and order, to lay the foregoing 
fact before yoii, and to request you, in accordance with the Fourth Sec- 
tion of the Fourth Article of the Constitution of the United States, to 
take measures to protect this State against the effects of the domestic 
violence which is now in existence. 

" That there may be no doubt, in your mind, as to the propriety of 
some interference at the present moment, without an application of the 
Legislature, it is only requisite to say that I have been officially informed 
that neither branch of the Legislature can with freedom and safety meet 
for the transaction of business ; and further, that though the Legislature of 
this State annually convenes on the first Tuesday in December, I have 
not yet been officially informed, in the usual manner, of their organiza- 
tion. I, therefore, do not believe that the Legislature can be convened 
or that it is already in session. On yesterday I made a formal applica- 
tion to Captain E. V. Sumner, commanding the United States Dragoons, 
and other forces at Carlisle, for the assistance of his command, of which 
the accompanying papers will exhibit a copy of his reply. 

" For tlie full information of your Excel'ency, I enclose the copy of a 
proclamation which I have issued on the occasion, together with the 
published statements of the facts connected with the riot in the Senate 
Chamber, signed by a majority of the Senators, and the material facts 
of which have been sworn to by the Speaker and other members of the 
Senate, and other published documents. 

" I have the honor to be, sir, with great respect, 

" Your obedient servant, 

"JOSEPH RITNER. 
" To his Excellency, Martin Van Buren, 

" President of the United States." 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 57 

The above letter of the Governor of Pennsylvania, was refer- 
red by the President to the Secretary of War, J. K. Poinsett, 
who under date of December 11th, replied to the application for 
troops, a portion of whose reply is here inserted : 

"The commotion," siys the Secretary of War, "which now threat- 
ens the peace of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, does not 
sjpear to arise from any opposition to the laws ; but grows out of 
a political contett between the different members of the Govern- 
ment, most, if not all of them, admitted to be the legal represen- 
tatives of the people constitutionally elected, about their relative 
rights, and especially in reference to the organization of the pop- 
ular branch of the Legislature. To interfere in any commotion 
growing out of a controversy of so grave and delicate a character, 
by the Federal authority, armed with the military power of the 
Government, would be attended with dangerous consequences to 
our republican institutions. In the opinion, of the President, his 
interference in any political commotion in a State could only be 
justified by the application for it, being clearly within the mean 
ing of the Fourth Section of the Fourth Article of the Consti- 
tution, and of the Act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof, 
and while the domestic violence brought to his notice, is of such 
a character that the State authorities, civil and military, after 
having been duly called upon, have proved inadequate to suppress 
it." 

Gen. Patterson, of Philadelphia, marched about one thousand 
troops from that city to Ilarrisburg, arriving with them at the 
State Capitol on Sunday morning, December 9th. A number 
of troops were also marched from Carlisle by Gen. Alexander, 
and companies prej)ared themselves to march in different sec- 
tions of the State, but were informed that their services were 
not required. By Thursday, the 6th of December, the greatest 
of the excitement had subsided ; and the Senate was again in 
session at the close of the week transacting business. All the 
soldiers were dismissed, and had reached their homes on Satur- 
day, December 22nd. The expenses occasioned by this attend- 
ance of the citizen soldiery, amounted to the sum of one hundred 
and forty-seven thousand dollars. 

The Cmmingham House of Representatives contiimed to meet 
rsgularly in a room of Wilson's Hotel, and it was believed bj 
the Democrats for a time that the Senate would recoo-nize th's 



58 ■ A REVIEW OF THE 

body as tlie legally constituted House. The majority of tlie 
Senators were Whigs, and as politicians usually stand by their 
party, it was supposed that this case would present no exception 
to the general rule. But after the ^vhole truth, as regards the 
election in Philadelphia County, came to be fully understood, 
many of the Whigs doubted the propriety of resisting the fairly 
expressed will of the people at the ballot box. Much as they 
w^ere entitled to the organization upon the return made by the 
Secretary of the Commonwealth, yet it was gravely questioned 
by many of them if that official had not transcended his authority 
in discriminating between the two returns, and deciding upon a 
matter which was by the constitution entrusted to the House of 
Eepresentatives itself. In this they agreed with their political 
opponents. Accordingly, on Monday, December 17th, three 
members of the Cunningham division, Messrs. Butler and. Stur- 
devant,, of Luzerne, and Montelius, of Union, came into the 
Hopkins' House and offered to be and were sworn in as members. 
This gave the Hopkins' House a majority of the members 
whose seats were uncontested. Mr. Micheler, a Whig Senator 
from IS^orthampton, on the 25th of December, offered a resolu- 
tion to recognize the Hopkins House of Representatis^es, as con- 
taining a majority of the legally elected members ; and this reso- 
lution was adopted, 17 voting in the affirmative, and 16 in the 
negative. The Whig Senators who supported this resolution, in 
addition to the eleven Democrats, were : Messrs. Fullertoii, 
Case, Strolim, Micheler, McConkey and Miller. Two days after 
the passage of this resolution in the Senate, a large number of 
the Whig members presented themselves to the recognized House 
of Representatives, and after being qualified took their seats. 
Wm. Hopkins on the same day resigned the Speakership, in order 
to accord to the acceding members their choice in the selection of 
a Speaker. He was, however, immediately re-elected, and the 
remaining Whigs, one after another, except Mr. Stevens, whose 
spirit was too proud to yield, came in, and after having been 
sworn, took their seats. He who liad been the soul of his party in 
its struo;gle, was too spirited to succumb when defeated and even 
deserted by all his followers ; and he chose rather to absent himself 
during the remainder of the session. 

In view of the adoption of the new Constitution, it was found 
necessary, for certain reasons, to convene a special session of the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 59 

liegisktnre, on May Yth, 1839. The political friends of Mr. 
Stevens in Adams Comitj, regarding themselves as entitled to 
full representation in the Legislature, held a meeting and passed 
resolutions requesting him to assume his seat in the House of 
Representatives at the coming special session. A committee was 
appointed to convey to Mr. Stevens the wishes of his constitu- 
ents. To tliis committee he replied as follows : 

"Gettysburg, May 3d, 1809. 

"Gentlemen: — I have received youi- letter of the 27th ult., melosing 
resohxtions of a county meeting held in my absence, approving of my 
conduct in liaving refused to take my seat in the House, and suggesting as 
tlie opinion of the meeting, that I could be of service to the Common- 
wealth by going into it at the adjourned session ; containing also flattering 
expressions of confidence reposed in me by the meeting. 

" My opinion of the legality of the body called the ' Hopkins' House,' 
remains unchanged. I beheve it to be an usurping body, forced upon the 
State by a band of rebels who have siiaken to then- fall the pillars of oiu' 
Constitution. But I owe too much to the kindness and steady confidence 
of the people of Adams County to disobey their wishes, however deli- 
cately intimated. I shall therefore conquer my repugnance to it and enter 
the House at the adjourned session. I shall feel happy if contrary to my 
expectations, I should be able to be of any service to you, the Common- 
wealth at large, and the hberty of the people which I fear is doomed to 
a short existence. Accept gentlemen for yourselves my most cordial 
thanks for the kind manner in which you have discharged the duties of 
your appointment. 

'• To James Cooper, R. S. Paxon and M. C. Clarkson, Esq's, Committee^ 

"THADDEUS STEVENS." 

Mr. Stevens presented himself at the special session of the 
House on May 7th, 1859, and offered to be qualified as a member. 
It was the occasion for the manifestation of intense hostility to- 
wards him. Thomas B. McElwee offered the following resolution : 

"Whereas, Thaddeus Stevens, a person elected from Adams County, 
claims a seat in this House ; And Whei-eas, if even the said Stevens has 
had a right to sit as a member on this floor, he has forfeited this right by 
acts in violation of the law of the land, by contempt of this House, and 
by a virtual resignation of his character as a representative of Adams 
County, therefore 

"Resolved, That his admission as a member be postponed for the 
present, and that a committee of five be appointed to investigate the 
claims of Stevens to a seat in the House of Representatives of Pennsyl- 
vania, and whether he has, if duly elected, forfeited his seat by mal- 
conduct." 

The above resolution called forth considerable disciission, but 
the committee was finally appointed and the following notice 
served upon Mr. Stevens : 



60 . A REVIEW OF THE 

" Harrisburg, Saturday Morning, May lltli, 1839. 

" Sir : Tlie committee appointed by the House of Representatives 'to 
inquire whether Thaddeus Stevens, a member elect from Adams County, 
has forfeited his right to a seat in the House,' Avill meet for that purpose 
in the committee room of the House, on Monday next at 4 o'clock, or at 
an earlier period if you desire it, where you may attend and be heard. 
•' To Thaddeus Stevens, Esq. 

"CHARLES M. HEGINS, Chairman." 

To tliis notice Mr. Stevens sent the following reply : 

"Harrisburg, May 13th, 1839. 

" Sir : — I received your letter of the 11th instant, informing me that 
the committee ' to inquire whether Thaddeus Stevens, a member elect 
Irom Adams County, has not forfeited his right to a seat in the House,' 
will meet on Monday next, when I may attend and be heard. 

" I decline to appear before the committee, because I will not consent 
to a palpable violation of the Constitution and laws. If, as on recent 
Occasions, I am compelled by force to witness such scenes, I can at least 
withhold from them my sanction, both express and implied. 

" The resolution admits the legality of my election and return, but 
proposes to inquire Avhether I have not forfeited ray seat before my ad- 
mission into the House. The grounds of such forf eitm'e are not specified 
in the resolution, and I can only infer them from the remarks of the 
original mover of the resolution, T. B. McElwee. As set forth by him, 
they consist in non user, misuser, contempt of the House, by calling it an 
illegal body — the offspring of a mob ; and for sundry personal improprie- 
ties. No constitutional disqualification was or is alleged, and for none 
other can the House, without an illegal exercise of arbitrary power, pre- 
vent a member elect from taking his seat. Expulsion for good cause, 
after admission, stands on different gi'ounds, and is authorized by the 
Constitution. 

" I think it will trouble the committee to find a precedent of the de- 
clared forfeiture for non riser of an elective representative office. For 
iTwo whole sessions the minority in the House of Parliament absented 
themselves from the House, yet neither the King, the Speaker, nor the 
majority dared to exercise the high-handed tyi-anny now attempted by 
what is called the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania. 

" That certain public executive or ministerial offices may be forfeited 
for non user in England where no written paramount Constitution exists, 
is true. The business of several departments of government could not 
otherwise be transacted. But it must be a continuing non user. It would 
be too late to declare the forfeiture after the officer had taken possession 
of his office, and was ready to discharge its duties. The forfeiture is a 
remedy against public inconvenience, and not a punishment for an 
offender. But in Constitutional Governments no such forfeiture takes 
place, except for the causes and in the mode pointed out in the Constitu- 
tion, itself. 

" In the present case, the majority did not seem to consider the public 
business as suffering by my absence, nor claim a right unknown to the 
Constitution, to forfeit my seat ; else they would have declared it vacant 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 61 

before the acLJournment. and given my constituents a new election during 
the vacation, so that they might be represented in the present session. 
No intimation of a vacancy, no step to supply it was taken until I 
appeared to take the oath and use the office. The House, therefore, seems 
rather anxious to create than supply a vacancy. 

"I need hardly notice the allegation of misuser of an office, which I 
have been jDrevented from using at all. 

" The right to exclude a member elect for speaking or writing con- 
temptuouslj' of the House or its proceedings is a novel and dangerous 
position. Until a member elect has taken the requisite oaths he can no 
more participate in the proceedings of the House, nor is he any more 
subject to its jui'isdiction than a private citizen. Individuals may be 
punished by the House for corrupt attempts upon its integrity by 
attempting to bribe its members, or for disturbing or interrupting its 
proceedings, as in the case of the December mob, but not for any written 
or printed comments on its proceedings however severe. The Sixth 
Section of the Ninth Article (the Declaration of Rights) of the Constitu- 
tion declares that " the printing press shall he free to every perso7h ivlio 
undertakes to examine the proceedings of the Legislature or any branch of 
the Government, and no law shall ever be made to restrain the right 
thereof." Anything I may have published, therefore, is not subject to 
your supervision, if the Constitution be yet considered as existing. 

"If I were an admitted member, and should demean myself indeco- 
rously and disorderly towards that body, the House has the power of 
expulsion. And if calling it ' an illegally organized body, the offspring of 
a mob,' as was contended in debate, be sufficient cause for expulsion, I 
think I may safely promise to furnish an excuse for that act soon after 
my admission. I do consider the ' Hopkins House ' a usurping body 
but like all other usurpers, having possession of the Government de facto, 
its acts will be binding for good or evil on the State. Heuce, my con- 
stituents have tliought proper to ask nae to take my seat and attempt to 
moderate an evil which is now without remedy. 

" If the committee should occupy the ground iDointed out by the mover 
of the resolution, and sit in judgment upon decency and morality, I must 
still further object to the tribunal. I mean no disrespect to the committee 
for the majority of them I feel a high regard ; but the whole question 
on their report will be again in the power of the majority of the House, 
and I cannot agree to admit the intellectual, moral or habitual compe- 
tency of Thomas B. McElwee, his compeers, coadjutors and followers to 
decide a question of decency and morals. 

" For myself, personally, I feel no anxiety for the result of this inquiry 
or the reasons which may be given for it, and to put which upon the 
Journal, I presume was the chief object of the proceeding. My only 
anxiety is that the Constituti n may not be further violated, and that the 
people may yet have some ground to hope that Liberty, although deeply 
wounded, may not expire. I owe my acknowledgments to the committee 
for their prompt attention to this business, and trust it may be speedily 
finished. With i^roper respect, your obedient servant, 
"To Charles Hegins, Esq., " THADDEUS STEVENS. 

" Chairman of Committee. &c." 



C3 A REVIEW OF THE 

After the committee had submitted their report, a resohition 
xvas adopted by a strict party vote of 58 to 34, declaring the seat 
of Mr. Stevens vacant in the House, and ordering a new election, 
to take j^lace on the 14th of June. At the special election, 
Mr. Stevens was re-elected, and on the 19th of June he appeared 
in the House, and having subscribed the requisite oath, took his 
seat. The Legislature adjourned on the 2Tthof the same month. 
The following is his address when presenting himself as a candi- 
date at the special election : 

"Fellow Citizens : — In accordance with your wishes, I presented my- 
self to the body now exercising the duties of the House of Representa- 
tives of this Conimonwealth, and desired to have administered to me the 
oath prescribed by law. A majority of that body, using the same unconsti- 
tutional and unlawful means which invested them with official authority, 
refused to allow me to occujiy that seat to which I had been called by 
the free choice of my fellow citizens. Under the most shallow, hypo- 
critical and false preten<;es, they have declared my seat vacant and im- 
posed upon you the expense of a new election, to be held on the 14th of 
June next. In doing so they have committed an unprecedented outrage 
on the rights of the people. If submitted to by the people, Liberty has 
become but a mei-e name. Already is the Constitution suspended and 
the most sacred contracts between the State and individuals are violated 
with the most daring and reckless audacity. Tiie tyrants who have 
usurped powei*, have determimed to oppress and plunder the people. It 
is for you to s ly whether you will be their willing slaves. If they are 
permitted finally to triumph, you hold your liberty, your lives, your rep- 
utation, and your property at their will alone. 

1' I had Jioped that no circumstances would occur which would render 
it necessary for me to be again a candidate for your suffrages. Botli my 
inclination and niy interest require me to retire from public life. But I 
will not execute tliat settled intention, when it will be construed into 
cowardice or despondency. To refuse to be a candidate now would be 
seized upon by my enemies as evidence that I distrust the people, and 
am afraid to entrust to them the redress of their own wrongs. I feel no 
such fear — no such distrust. Witliout intending any invidious com- 
parison, I have alwaj's said what I still believe, that the people of Adams 
County have more intelligence, and not less honesty, than the people of 
any other county of the State. To such a people I can have no fear in 
appealing against lawless aggression. To them I appeal to lestore to me 
that which was their free gift, and therefore my right, and of which I 
have been robbed by those who ' feel power and forget right.' 

" I present myself to you as a candidate to fill that vacancy which was 
created to wound my and your feelings. I do not Avant to receive a party 
nomination from my friends. The question now to be decided is above 
party considerations, and would be disgraced by sinking it to the level of 
a party contest. Every freeman must be impelled to resist this public 
outrage as a personal wrong to himself. Every thing dear to him in liis 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 63 

country, his liberty, tlie liberty of his children and the title to his prop- 
erty admonish him to rise above every paltry personal consideration, and 
rebuke tyranny at that great tribunal of freemen — the ballot box. 

" While, however, you are determined, resolute and energetic, let me 
implore you not to imitate the example of our oppressors, but do every- 
thing calmly and temperately. This admonition is hardly necessarj^ to 
the orderly citizens of Adams County, but when oppression is so intolera. 
ble, as at present, it is difficult for the most peaceable and quiet men to 
control their indignation. 

" With respect and gratitude, I am, 

" Your obedient servant, 

" THADDEUS STEVENS," 
Harrisburg, Mr.y 25th, 1839, 

A number of prosecutions for riot were instituted against the 
leading Democrats who participated in the- scenes at Harrisburg 
during the 4th and 5th of December, 1838, and true bills of 
indictment were found by the Grand Jury, -at the Dauphin 
County January Sessions, 1839, against Gen. Adam Diller, 
Charles Pray, George W. Barton, and others. These bills were 
quashed by the Court at the April Sessions, for reasons presented 
by the attorneys for the defendants. Mr. Stevens was one of the 
counsel for the pr6secution in these riot cases. 

When Mr. Stevens retired from the Legislature in June, 1839, 
it was with the determination that it should be his last service in 
the State Legislature; but at the solicitation of friends he allowed 
himself to be prevailed upon once more to become a candidate, 
and he was returned again to the House in 1811. On the organ- 
ization of the Legislature he was placed upon the Judiciaiy 
Committee of the House, a position for whicli he was known to 
possess rare qualilications. In February, 1842, the resolutions of 
Mr. Eumford, suspending executions between the banks .and their 
debtors while the banks remained in suspension, came up on third 
reading. Mr. Stevens obtained the floor, and moved to go into 
Committee of the Whole, for the purpose of substituting in the 
place of the bill then pending, one which he caused to be read at 
the Clerk's desk. " He supported," says the reporter, " his motion 
in a powerful speech — such a speech as only Thaddeus Stevens 
can make — which cast into insignificance the attempts at oratory 
which are daily made here. The bill provides for an innnediate 
resumption of specie payments, under specified penalties, amongst 
which is that during the time of suspension the pay of all the 
officers of the institution shall be suspended. The matter was 



64 A REVIEW OF THE 

postponed wltliont any action npon it, as it was desirous to 
get rid of a troublesome subject." 

During the same session, Mr. Stevens offered a resolution to 
amend the Constitution by limiting the State debt to forty mil- 
lions of dollars. The resolution passed in the House by a large 
majority. 

A large number of petitions being presented to the Legisla- 
ture at this session, asking for the abrogation of the death penalty 
in cases of murder, and these being referred to the Judiciary 
Committee, the latter through their Chairman, Mr. McElwee, 
reported against the requests of the petitioners. George Shars- 
wood and Thaddeus Stevens, two members of this committee, 
submitted a minority report, setting forth their reasons for favor- 
ing the abolition of the death penalty, and concluding as follows : 

"How imperfectly then, does the example of this punishment operate 
to deter inen fi-om the commission of this crinae {murder), accompanied 
as it is with so many multiplied chances of escape. Indeed, in the 
present constitution of society, we repeat, no crime is so likely to escape 
its due and proportionate puni-hment as thai highest one, to which our 
law has affixe i the severest penalties. 

" Let the punishment be commuted to solitary imprisorment at hard 
labor for life, and these chances of partial or entire immunity will no 
longer exist. The terror of the doom, joined to the moral certainly of 
its infliction, will bj ample to deter offenders. The natural hoiTor felt 
for the Clime will not be lost in the minds of prosecutors, witnesses, 
jurors and judges in sympathy for the accused. The mercy of the 
Executive will not be extended, except in those cases in which from after 
discovered evidence the innocence of the coavict has been made appar- 
ent, or when after the probation Ol years, his moral reformation and 
repentance are placed beyond a reasonable doubt.'' 

The following review and estimate of Mr. Stevens as a member 
of the Pennsylvania Legislature, from the pen of one of his own 
partisan contemporaries, is appended as the conclusion of his career 
as a State Legislator. It is from the Ilarrisburg Telegrajjh : 

"We are aware that our columns have been accused of a blind devo- 
tion to Thaddeus Stevens ; and those whose aim it has been to detract 
from his reputation, have sought to brand the sincere praises inspired by, 
his talents and eloquence, as the favoring sycophancy of the parasite. 
But the writer of the present article has never had the pleasure before 
this session (1\4 ) of hearing Mr. Stevens in a deliberative body ; and he 
has been too deeply impressed with the commanding influence of his 
talents, the well trained tone of his mind, and with his blended graces of 
the orator and rhetorician, that he is no I nger at a loss t ) discover why 
it is that a 1 the invective which partisan spleen could suggest, all the 
ribaldry which political malice could engender, all the scurrility which a 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. C5 

connipt press could procreate, and all the venom which was spit out 
under the protection of a 'previous pardon,' have been high heaped upon 
him. 

" So inveterate have been these attacks, so untiring the activity of his 
assailants, that a portion of the very party with which he acts polili- 
cally, has caught the tone of their opponents denunciations, and look on 
him with distrust. It would be difticult fonp,ny who adopt this course to 
explain their reasons. We look in vain through the public career of Mr. 
Stevens to find in what particular he has been unfaithful to the cause of 
democracy, unless we are to mistake for the pure fountain of truth the 
poluted streams of partisan malignity. Whenever the destructive ten- 
dencies of his political enemies seek to make inroads on our constitu- 
tional safej,uards, or batter the muniments of our chartered liberty, there 
is he found contending for the letter and spirit of Freedom's magna 
charta. When the illiberal policy of those who would fetter the minds and 
hold in thi-all the intellects of our rising generation exhibits itself, then 
is he found exerting his giant powers in favor of an universal spread of 
education, which, like the light-giving sun, shall shine on all alike and 
gild with equal brilliancy, the yeoinan's cottage and the demagogue's 
stately mansion. If the acts of those who are recreant to the true in- 
terests of the free labor of the North, for the purpose of strengthening 
their unwhoUy alliance with the slave drivers of the South, at any time 
aim a deadly blow at agriculture and manufacturing prosperity, he will 
be found throwing himself into the breach, and with fervid eloquence, 
pointing to the lights of the world's experience and calling on all, to use 
them as beacons to avoid the rocks on which thousands have foundered, 
or the quicksands in which they have been engulphed. 

" To judge of the varied powers of Tliaddeus Stevens, it is only necessary 
to review his course during the brief limit of the present session. In this 
review would be included his i^owerful argument on the right of petition, 
even from a meeting of repudiators, his cogent appeals on the necessity of 
placing a constitutional limit to the State debt, and taking from any 
future legislature the power of continuing the present system of wasteful 
expenditure without any provision to meet liabilities in'curred thereby ; 
his able and practical remarks on the vital importance of the protective 
policy to the interests of our nation, showing how the flood of commerce 
poured into England under the Navigation .ct ; how Holland, once the 
commercial carrier of the whole world, wr paralyzed under the influence 
of free-trade doctrines, and how the firs* mciples of legislation demand 
that home labor should be fostered an .otected. Whoever has heard 
Mr. Stevens, at this session or at any .er, cannot hesitate to accord him 
the most commanding abilities a . sound constitutional sentiments. 
Hence it is, standing as he does, a giant among his pigmy opponents, that 
every shaft of malice and invective is hurled at him by every puny whip- 
ster, wlio, like the fool of Crete, exposes his waxy softness to the fervid 
glow of his eloquent reply. 

" It is not so much our wish to eulogize Mr. Stevens as to direct the 
public attention to the position he has assumed, and so well maintains. 
We want the eyes of the Commonwealth directed towards him. We 



66 ' A REVIEW OF THE 

want him judged of by his acts, and not through the false medium of 
political Tituperation. We desire to see his course scanned with impartial 
discrimination, and on its issue we want our Commonwealth to pronounce 
its judgment. If he be found to swerve a point from the true cynosure 
of democracy, or if he varies a line from the most matured principles of 
legislative economy, let that judgment be of condemnation ; but if he pass 
the trial, justice demands tl^t the praises be awarded to him which ars 
the meed of every public servant who has labored long and faithfully for 
the best interests of the Commonwealth," 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AilERICA. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY AGITATION. 



The anti-slavery struggle in America, in which Mr. Stevens 
bore a conspicuous part, is necessary to be somewhat considered 
in order to have a more perfect understanding of his character, 
as an individual and as a statesman, than otherwise could be 
obtained. Born and educated in New England, where anti- 
slavery sentiments first developed themselves in the United 
States, it is not strange that he should have manifested at an 
early period of his life an opposition to the southern institution., 
Besides, he belonged to the party that had led the resistance to 
the admission of Missouri as a slave State into the Union ; and 
from that period all whose convictions became iixed in that 
memorable straggle remained unchanged, and were rather 
strengthened than weakened a?, time progressed and the opposi- 
tion to slavery as a movement became more consolidated. 

Human slavery has been one of the established forms of the 
social organization of the ancient, mtedieval and modern world. 
Its establishment was based upon the assumed inequality of men, as 
indicated by the clearest proofs of experience and reason in all 
ages and nations. This manifest inequality, as witnessed in all 
creation, was sufficient to satisfy the philosophers and legislators 
of ancient nations that a system of subordination was necessary 
to maintain that law and order which the constitution of society 
and government seemed to require. Hence flowed those systems 
of enslavement, that from the earliest periods of history caused 
the feelings of humanity to enter their protest, but which in 
modern times have overborne the logic of reason and proclaimed 
a universal jubilee to all races of mankind throughout the civil- 
ized countries of the earth. But in the institution of slavery is 
witnessed simply, as it were, the construction of all the social 
forms of existence, as they obtained from the earliest periods of 
time, with rare exceptions, down to the protestant reformation, 



63 A EEVIEW OF THE 

itself tlie first united remonstrance against mental and ecclesias- 
tical domination. Ancient policy was based upon subordination, 
while the effort of modern times is to make speech, thought and 
action, free. Freedom was first fully born when the Wittemberg 
monk attached his theses to the castle gate of the city, and it has 
been growing from that period until the present, branching in all 
directions. Every movement, religious or civil, from the six- 
teenth century, owe their impulse to that which was then set in 
motion. 

But the American movement of anti-slavery is that alone, 
after having glanced at its paternity, which concerns our atten- 
tion at this time. This protest of the Anglo-American mind 
against the enslavement of tlie African race, had its immediate 
birth in the sympathetic feelings, which were entertained by the 
philanthropists of the 19 th century for a race that they hoped to 
elevate, by placing it in a system of legal equality with them- 
selves. It was about the year 1833, that the agitation first set 
fully in, although individual protests against the institution of 
slavery had hitherto been numerous. What, more than all else, 
gave an impulse to that movement at this particular time, was 
the result of British agitation, which was crowned with success 
in August 1833, by Parliament decreeing the emancipation of 
all the slaves on the West India plantations. 'No event could 
have occurred so gratifying to the wishes of the abolitionists, as 
that enactment which proclaimed freedom to the AYest India 
negroes and raised them to the rank of equality with the whites. 
At this time, however, the number of decided abolitionists M' ere 
comparatively few, and such as they were, persons of humble 
condition and insignificant influence. Many there were whose 
feelings were repugnant to slavery, but they had been taught to 
believe that it was legal and based upon the words of revelation, 
and hence they were unwilling to interfere with it. The influ- 
ence that set the agitation on foot was germinated in free 
thought and promulgated by reformers who recognized a higher 
than any written code. It was that of which universal humanity 
was the recipient, and of which Yoltaire, Rousseau and Montes- 
quieu were the ablest apostles. 

The enemies of negro slavery, about the period of the Ameri- 
can Revolution, were those chiefly who had imbibed the doctrines 
of the French writers, who prepared the way for the scenes 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 69 

that drencliecl the soil of France witli blood in the convulsion of 
1789 and '93. This species of abolitionism was quiet and sympa- 
thetic, but entirely unaggressive in its character, and yet potential 
in its effects. It made its way through all the States of the North, 
obliterating in each, one after another, the traces of slavery that 
existed in them. It bore with it likewise the quickening influ- 
ences that helped to kindle the flame of aggressive anti-slavery 
agitation which began as above stated. Benjamin Lundy, Charles 
, Osborne, Elihu Embree, humble yet sincere workers in the cause 
of freedom., were early fanning the flame of anti-slavery agitation, 
and arousing the American mind to its o^vn consciousness of the 
evils ^/hich the Southern blacks endured. The first named of these 
by 1815 had organized the Union Humane Society, consisting of 
but five or six persons, and in the following year issued an appeal 
to the philanthropists on the subject of slavery. Osborne, not 
long after this, began the publication of the Philanthropist^ and 
the Emancipator also started by him, was afterwards issued for a 
time near Jonesville, Tennesee. The first American Abolition 
Convention was held in Philadelphia in the winter of 1823^^ 
which was attended by men prompted by the love of humanity. 
William Lloyd Garrison became a convert to the cause of 
abolitionism in the year 1828, These various influences and 
movements, like the different branches of a stream, were thus 
uniting themselves, and by 1833 a swollen stream, with an active 
current was visible, and one that attracted from this point con- 
siderable attention. 

The movement up to this time had been chiefly philanthropic 
in its character, and like the Colonization Society, met with sup- 
porters in both sections of the Union, South as well as I^oi'th. 
Already, however, the ISTew England Anti-Slavery Society had 
been organized, and the year, 1833, saw one instituted in New 
York City, and a National Anti-Slavery Convention asssemble in 
Philadelphia, consisting of sixty members, and representing ten 
States of the Union. Every newspaper established in the interest 
of anti-slavery, and every society which was organized and the 
proceedings of whose meetings were published gave, as it were, 
new impetus to the movement. But now it was that resistance 
began to be encountered by the Abolitionists, and from this 
period the agitation had a steady and increasing influence upon 
the reorganization of the parties throughout the country. Up to 



70 A EEVIEW OF THE 

1833, the Abolitionists drew recruits from both of the old politi- 
cal parties of the "JSTorth ; but it is undeniable that bj much the 
larger proportion came from the Federal party, and its successors 
as comprising the majority of the men of wealth, culture and 
social position. The Democratic party, from its earliest organiza- 
tion, had been that to which the bulk of the people had been 
attached. The reasons for this division of parties, it concerns us 
uol, on the present occasion to investigate. 

The character of the earliest resistance to the anti-slavery agi- 
tation, showed itself in the mobbing of abolition lecturers in the 
E^orthj the dispersal of assemblages and the burning of halls 
ei'eeted for the holding of liberty meetings, and the destruction 
of newspapers published in that interest. The period of these 
mobs and riots extended from 1833 up to about 1841, when they 
mostly ceased. When these disturbances were first inaugurated, 
they were participated in by men of character, and belonging to 
both political parties ; but the preponderance of participants in 
these demonstrations being usually composed largely of the party 
of the people, and the majority of the lovers of law and order 
belonging to the opposite one, it was not long till this division 
itself arrayed a diversity of sentiment on this question amongst 
the people of the North. It was reasonable to expect that the 
Democratic party should become the staunchest advocates of the 
rights of the southern people under the constitution. The prin- 
ciples of that party were fixed and well understood both North 
and South ; its creed founded upon the Virginia and Kentucky 
resolutions of 1Y98, had been time and again proclaimed and 
re-affirmed in State and National Conventions ; and its organiza- 
tion from the days of Jefferson was complete and entrusted with 
the 'management of the General Government. The Federal 
party, though orighially comprising in its ranks the leading minds 
of the nation, had forfeited the confidence of the country ; and 
after the late war with Great Britain, it gradually disappeared as 
a national organization. Anti-Masonry, which in the Northern 
States took its place, never was able to attain to position in the 
South, and as a consequence soon expired. Another reason why 
the Democracy from the first were the attached defenders of 
southern institutions, was that the party had national leaders in 
the South Avho were slave-holders, and it was natural that the 
party should defend these and their rights as their own. WheL» 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 71 

the antl-slaveiy agitation first began fairly, Gen. Jackson, a slave- 
liolder, was the President of the United States, and the most 
honored man in the Kepublic. An institution defended by him 
and other eminent southern statesmen, would not be likely to be 
viewed as odious by the masses of the people, and one deserving 
of the abuse that the Abolitionists were in the habit of applying 
to it. On the part of the Federalists and Anti-Masons the same 
attachment was not felt for the President and his policy ; and 
from political antipathy it is easy to perceive how a feeling of 
sympathy for the negro slaves could gradually ripen into intense 
opposition to the southern institution. And thus it was that the 
Abolition ranks, secret and avowed, were swelled chiefly by enlist- 
ments obtained amongst the opposition to the Democracy. 

From the year 1833, the varied evolutions of the contesting 
parties in the interest of and opposed to slavery, would require 
volumes to fully detail. Only the leading features, therefore, can 
be expected to be grouped in a work of this character ; and such 
as most fully illustrate the current of AmericajU opinion as it 
shaped itself in both sections of the Union. In the mob resist- 
ance of the North, to the spread of abolition sentiments, is seen 
simply an exhibition of the deep-seated conviction of the people 
of the inferiority of the African as compared with the Caucasian 
race ; an inferiority stamped by the hand of creative power, and 
which history and experience had demonstrated to reflecting 
minds in all ages. But the principle of the mob being altogether 
adverse to the rules of social order, could not but sink to its 
normal level, as the work of the lawless element of the body 
politic. Its aim, though heartily approved by the respectable 
and influential classes of society, could not long receive their 
open and sanctioning encouragement ; and it soon, as a conse, 
quence, became the work of the vulgar and degraded in society. 
Not that the mob did not still continue to be inspired by the 
leading minds of the different localities where it showed itself in 
resistance to anti-slavery agitation ; for it may be accepted as a- 
truth that the turbulent members of society in such lawless 
advances as above alluded to, ever receive their orders, or at least 
their sanction, from higher authority than themselves. They are 
in a sense, therefore, the expression of the public opinion of their 
localities, and are, as it were, minor revolutions for the overthrow 
or removal of grievances that are felt by society. The spirit of 



72 A REVIEW OF THE 

tumultuous resistance are but premonitions of tiie diseased con- 
dition of existing society, which the laws of social being are 
essaying to remedy by all possible efforts in order to its preserva- 
tion. The mobbing of Lovejoy, of Illinois, the seizure and 
dragging of Wm. Lloyd Garrison through the streets of Boston, 
and the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia, were but 
manifestations of the antagonism that the northern people ex- 
hibited towards the new ideas of the radical Abolition school. 
Put the Abolitionists, although in a miserable minority, had as 
against mob resistance every moral advantage. They were the 
champio-u* of free speech and a free press, cardinal principles of 
republicanism ; and all the elements of social order must natu- 
rally cliug to these as the landmarks of freedom. As it was im- 
possible for any to justify lawbreaking, mob interposition must 
gradually retire into the background. 

But there was another form of resistance to anti-slavery agita- 
tion, germinated by the same influences that also began about 
1833 ; and which, to properly comprehend the period, must be 
considered. This was the moral dislike that showed itself to the 
aggressions of abolitionism, and which was exhibited by the 
educated and reiined part of the northern people. The vastly 
preponderating weight of intelligent public opinion in the North, 
from the connnencement of the anti-slavery agitation, was alto- 
gether in opposition to the innovating doctrines of the radical 
reformers ; and this preponderance was early manifest in both 
the secular and ecclesiastical American northern press. In the 
Literary and Theological Remew for December, 1835, published 
in the City of New York, the position was boldly assumed and 
ably argued that the Abolitionists were " justly liable to the 
highest civil penalties and ecclesiastical censures." This sentiment 
expressed the current opinion as held by a large number of the 
leading men in Amei-ica at that time, and, as a consequence, it 
escaped all censure amongst the patrons of the journal, or even 
from the organs of the rival theological party. In unison with 
the sentiment as expressed in the above-named Heview, a Grand 
Jury of Oneida County, IST. Y., a short time prior to the Utica riot 
made a presentment, in which they declared that those who form 
Abolition Societies are guilty of sedition, that they ought to be 
punished, and that it is the duty of all citizens, loyal to the Con- 
stitution, to destroy their publications wherever found. In the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 73 

same year, the Hon. William Sullivan issued a pamplilet in 
Boston, in which the following desire was expressed : " It is to 
be hoped and expected that Massachusetts will enact laws declar- 
ing the printing, publishing and circulating papers and pamphlets 
on slavery, and also the holding of meetings to discuss slavery 
and abolition, to be public indictable offences, and provide for 
the punishment thereof in such manner as will more effectually 
prevent such offences." 

The intense indignation that inflamed the Southern people 
against the anti-slavery agitation of the country may in a large 
measure be considered as instrumental in producing the strong 
conservative sentiment in the Korthern States, which declared 
itself in favor of the guarantees of the Federal Constitution. 
The people of the South had been most ardent advocates of con- 
stitutional liberty, and had ever shown a steady attachment to 
repubhcan principles of Government. They had declared them- 
selves as ready to make any honorable sacrifice that might be 
required of them, in order to secure the perpetuity of the Union 
and the Constitution as it had been transmitted by its framers. 
The institution of slavery, they claimed as one of the vested 
rights that they, as a people possessed, and over which neitl^er the 
General Government nor any branch thereof had any authority 
to interfere, either for the emancipation of the Southern slaves 
or the amelioration of their condition. All this, they insisted, 
was a matter over which the people of the several slave States 
alone had jurisdiction. The attacks of the Northern Abolition- 
ists upon the institution of slavery had the effect of deeply 
incensing the southern people, and they loudly protested against 
the unjust interference, as they denounced it, and demanded that 
their rights should be observed and their opinions respected. 
Public bodies and legislative assemblies of the South offered 
rewards for the rendition of northern agitators, and southern 
Governors called upon northern officials to supress the anti-slavery 
discussion, as calculated, unless checked, to disrupt in the future 
the American Union. The whole southern people seemed a unit 
in favor of this demand upon the Korth. The clergy of that 
section from the first, with one accord, sanctioned the justice of 
the request, and sought by every means in their power to help 
to stifle the rising fire that might envelope the fair fabric of the 
Eepublic in its flames. Rev. Thomas S. Witherspoon, of Ala- 



74 A REVIEW OF THE 

Lama, tlms wrote to the ErriaTicijpator : " Let jonr emisarles 
dare to cross the Potomac, and I cannot promise that your fate 
will be less than Ilaman's. Then beware how you goad an 
insulted but magniminous people to deeds of desperation." 

Rev. William S. Plummer, of Richmond, Yirginia, in 1835 
expressed the following sentiments : "Let them (the Abolitionists) 
understand that they will be caught if they come among us, and 
they will take good care to keep out of our way. If Abolitionists 
will set the country in a blaze, it is but fair that they should re- 
ceive the first warming at the fire." 

Governor McDuffie, of South Carolina, in December, 1835, 
called the attention of the Legislature to the subject of abolition 
agitation at the ISTorth. On the 16th of the same month, both 
Houses of the legislature adopted the following : 

"Resolved, That the Legislature of South Carolina, having every confi- 
dence in the justice and friendship of the non-slave-holding States, 
announces her confident expectation, and she earnestly requests that the 
Government of these States will promptly and effectually suppress all 
those associations w'ithin their respective limits purporting to be abolition 
societies." 

On December 19th, 1835, the General Assemby of ISTorth 

Carolina resolved as follows : 

" JResolved, That our sister States are respectively requested to enact 
penal laws prohibiting the printing within their respective limits, all such 
publications as may have a tendency to make our slaves discontented." 

January, Yth, 1836, the Alabama legislature adopted the fol- 
lowing resolve : 

" Resolved, That we call upon our sis'^er States and respectfully request 
them to enact such penal laws as will finally put an end to the malignant 
deeds of the Abolitionists." 

February 10th, 1836, both Houses of the Yirginia Legislature 

adopted the following : 

*' Resolved, That the non-slave-holding States of the Union are respect- 
fully but earnestly requested promptly to adopt penal enactments, or such 
other measures as will efficiently suppress all associations within their 
respective limits, purporting to be, or having the character of Abolition 
Societies." 

Resolutions were passed in the Georgia Legislatureof the fol- 
lowing import : 

" Resolved, That it is deeply incumbent on the people of the North to 
crush the traitorous designs of the Abolitionists." 

The above resolutions were ofiicially communicated to the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 75 

Governors of the Northern States, and by tliem laid before 
their respective Legislatures. It was quite apparent by this time 
that the leaven of abolitionism was principally conhned to the 
"Whig and Anti-Masonic party of the ISTorth, for reasons as 
before stated. The Democratic Governors and Legislatures were 
ready to lend their influence for the repression of the agitation ; 
whereas, many influential members of the Whig party were dif- 
ferently disposed. George Wolf, the retiring Democratic Gov 
ernor of Pennsylvania, in his last Annual Message in December, 
1835, expressed his disapprobation as regards the movements of 
the Abohtionists in the free States; and predicted the conse- 
quences unless checked, and a reign of reason re-inaugurated. 
But on the other hand, Joseph Kitner, the Anti-Masonic suc- 
cessor of the last named executive, stigmatized all such sen- 
timents as had been expressed by his predecessor in his Message 
as a " bowing of the knee to the dark spirit of slavery." It was 
believed, from the influence known to be exerted by Thaddeus 
Stevens upon the mind of the Anti-Masonic Governor of Penn- 
sylvania, that the sentiment thus expressed in his inaugural as 
regards slavery, was the inspiration of the former, who was 
already an avowed opponent of the southern institution. Wliilst 
the leaven of abolitionism was confined in the main to the ranks 
of the Whig party, there was nevertheless a strong section of it 
that in no wise so sympathized. Edward Everett, the Whig 
Governor of Massachusetts, in his Message communicating the 
southern documents, held the following language : 

" Wliatever by direct and necessary operation is oaiculated to excite an 
insurrection among the States, has been held by highly respectable and 
legal authority, an offence against the peace of the Commonwealth, 
which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at Common law." 

William L. Marcy, the Democratic Governor of !N"ew Tork, in 
his Message in January, 1836, upon the same subject, spoke as 
follows : 

'' Without the power to pass such laws, the States would not possess 
all the necessary means for preserving their external relations of peace 
among themselves." 

But in 1835 the movement of the anti-slavery agitation had 
already become of such importance as to claim the attention of 
President Jackson, who, in his Message of December in that 
year, accused the Abolitionists of " unconstitutional and wicked 



76 A REVIEW OF THE 

attempts," menacing the stability and perpetuity of tlie Federal 
Union, and recommending as follows : 

"I would, therefore, call the special attention of Congress to the sub- 
ject, and z-esf)ectfully suggest the propriety of passing such a law as will 
prohibit, under severe penalties, ^le circulation in the Southern States, 
llirough the mail, of incendiary publications intended to instigate the 
slaves to insurrection." 

The attention of the President had been called to this subject 
by the tumultuous occurrences that had taken place, occasioned 
by the transmission through the mails of Abolition documents to 
citizens in the Southern States. On the 29th of July, 1835, a 
riot, headed by the influential citizens of Charleston, had broken 
open the post office in that city and destroyed the incendiary Ab- 
olition matter. From this time. Southern postmasters, and even 
some in the North, assumed the authority of determining what 
should not be transmitted through the mails. Samuel L. Gou- 
verneur, the postmaster of JN^ew York, urged upon the Anti- 
Slavery Society " voluntarily to desist from attempting to send 
their publications into the Southern States by the public mails." 
Finding that his request w^as not heeded, he addressed Amos 
Kendal, Postmaster General, for instructions on this point, who, 
under date of August 22d, replied as follows : 

" I am deterred from giving an order to exclude the whole series of 
Abolition j)ublications from the Southern mails, only by a want of legal 
power, and if I were situated as you are, I would do as you have done." 

Gen. Jackson's recommendation for the enactment of a law 
for the repression of incendiary matter through the mail was 
referred by the Senate to a Select Committee, of which John C. 
Calhoun was Chairman. The report of this committee, as sub- 
mitted, expressed the convictions of the southern people, and 
also of the great majority of those of the JSTorth, as regards the 
agitation of the slavery question. On this pomt, the report 
speaks as follows : 

" The inevitable tendency of the means to which the Abolitionists 
have resorted to effect their object, must, if persisted in, end in com- 
pletely alienating the two great sections of the Union. The incessant 
action of hundreds of societies, and a vast printing establishment throw- 
ing out daily, thousands of artful and inflammatory publications, must 
make, in time, a deep impression on the section of the Union where they 
freely circulate, and are mainly designed to have effect. The well in- 
formed and thoughtful may hold them in contempt, but the young, the 
inexperienced, the ignorant and thoughtless, wUl receive the poison. In 
process of time, when the number of proselytes is sufficiently multi- 
plied, the artful and the profligate, who are ever on the watch to seize on 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. 77 

, any means, however wicked and dangerous, will unite witli the fanatics 
and make theii* movements the basis of a powerful political party, that 
will seek advancement by diffusing, as widely as possible, hatred against 
the slave-holding States. But as hati-ed begets hatred and animosity, 
these feelings would become reciprocal till every vestige of attachment 
would cease to exist between the two sections, when the Union and the 
Constitution, the offspring of mutual affection and confidence, would 
forever perish. Such is the danger to which the movements of the Abo- 
litionists expose the country. If the force of the obligation is in pro- 
portion to the magnitude of the danger, stronger cannot be imposed 
than is at present on the States within whose limits the danger origi- 
nates, to arrest its further progress — a duty they owe not only to the> 
States whose institutions are assailed, but to the Union and Constitution, - 
as has been shown, and it may be added, to themselves." 

But Mr. Calhoun, as a States right Democrat, clearly perceived 
that the General Government had no right to legislate upon a 
subject of this character, save by claiming authority not dele- 
gated in the Federal . Constitution. ' The assumption of such 
power would end in that consolidation of the Government, which 
he and the other leaders of his political school had so persistently 
battled, from the earliest organization of the Jefferson Eepubli- 
can party. On this point, in the same report, he reasoned as 
follows : 

" Nothing is more clear than that the admission of the right of Con- 
gress to determine what papers are incendiary, and as such, to prohibit 
their circulation through the mail, necessarily involves the right to 
determine what are not incendiary, and enforce their circulation. If 
Congress may this year decide what incendiary publications are, they 
may next year decide what they are not, and thus laden the mails with 
real or corrupt abolitionism. It belongs to the States^ and not to Con- 
gress, to determine what is or what is not calculated to disturb their 
security." 

It was thus proposed that it should be within the province of 
each State, to say for itself, what kind of reading it would deem 
incendiary, and that Congress should prohibit the transmission of 
such matter to that State. A bill for this purpose was submitted 
as follows : 

" Be it enacted, etc. , that it shall not be lawful for any deputy postmaster 
in any State, Territory or District of the United States, knowingly to deliver 
to any person whatsoever, any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill, or other 
printed paper or pictorial representation touching the subject of slavery, 
where, by the law^s of the said State, Territory or District their circulation 
is prohibited ; and any deputy postmaster who shall be guilty thereof, 
shall be forthwith removed from office." 

The above bill was ordered to a third reading in the Senate by 



78 A REVIEW OF THE 

the vote of 18 yeas to 18 nays, Yice-P resident Yan Buren giving 
the casting vote in the affirmative ; but it failed on the final vote, 
and, as a consequence, never became a law. And thus ended the 
eft'c^'t to exclude the abolition literature of the age from passing 
through the Federal mails. The moral victory thus gained by 
the Abolitionists was of incalculable advantage to them and tlieii* 
cause in all their subsequent movements, for they seemed to stand 
forth before the world as the champions of free speech and a free 
press, which all the power of President Jackson and his follow- 
ers were unable to suppress. The eclat of the victory resounded 
far and wide, and became as it were the watchword in other con- 
flicts of like character. 

The first great battle of abolitionism had been fought in the 
Halls of the National Congress. Others of equal importance 
were soon to be decided, but upon a less august arena ; but in all 
» the same principles were in dispute. The demand of the South- 
ern States that discussion should be suppressed on the slavery 
question, was one altogether in seeming disharmony with the 
generally received principles of republican liberty. On the 2d 
of Februarj^, 1836, a bill was reported in the Legislature of 
Rhode Island for the pui'pose of repressing slavery agitation in 
the borders of the State. The attempt thus to muzzle free sj)eech 
appeared to liberal-minded men, an effort as it were, to turn back 
the dial of the age, and as this was impossible, the Abolitionists 
had, as allies, the advocates of progressive and independent free 
thought. The small State of Rhode Island, accordingly, arrayed 
itself through the efforts of George Curtis and Thomas W. Dorr, 
in opposition to southern demands. In ISTew York a report was 
adopted by the Legislature in May, 1836, responding to the 
sentiments of Governor Marcy's Message, already cited,' and 
pledging the faith of the State to enact such laws whenever they 
shall be i-equisite. But it is doubtful if even then, or at any 
subsequent time, such legislation could have been secured, for the 
belief in free speech is one of the cardinal principles of all who 
belie^^e in the democratic form of government. 

But of all the Legislative collisions between those favoring the 
repression af anti-slavery agitation, and the friends of free speech, 
that which took place in Massachusetts in 1836, was the most 
fiercely contested, and arrayed in opposition to each other, the 
ablest and most eloquent opponents. A joint committee of both 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 79 

Houses of the Legislature liad been raised to report upon the 
Southern demands, and of this committee Senator Lunt was chair- 
man. The anti-slavery committee at Boston were notified to 
appear and make their defense on March 4th. A few prominent 
men appeared on the side of the Abolitionists, and were heard by 
the committee in defense of their principles. Those who spoke 
took the ground that free speech was one of the unalienable rights 
of every citizen of the old Commonwealth. Prof. Charles Folen 
in the course of his remarks alluded to some outrages that had 
recently been perpetrated against the Abolitionists, and averred 
that any legislative interposition of the kind proposed, would 
simply invite a repetition of what had occurred. The chairman 
of the committee at this point silenced the speaker, as reflecting 
offensively upon the legislative body of the State, and terminated 
the interview. Such proceeding could have but one effect upon 
minds conscious of rectitude of intention, and attached to Amer- 
ican freedom. Mvich as they might dread slavery agitation in its 
effects, they could not consent to see the right of free speech 
frustrated. A Boston editor in giving an account of the pro- 
ceedings contended that the Abolitionists were entitled to a fair 
hearing. During the next two days they issued their defense in 
a pamphlet of over forty pages ; and a copy of this was soon in the 
hands of every member of the Legislature, and scattered through- 
out the whole country. The committee was directed by the Leg- 
islature to allow the Abolitionists to complete their defense on the 
8th of March. The adjacent country was now aroused, and the 
Hall of the House of Representatives where the committee sat 
was crowded at the hearing. Prof. Folen concluded his defense 
and Avas followed by William Lloyd Garrison and others. Wil- 
liam Goodel, one of the speakers, charged upon the Southern 
States a conspiracy against the liberty of the free ]^orth. He 
was repeatedly called to order ; but alluding to the documents 
from the South, lying on the table, he styled them fetters and 
remarked : " Mr. Chairman ! are you prepared to attempt putting 
them on ?" He was interrupted by the Chairman and ordered to 
take his seat. He sat down amidst the great agitation of the 
assemblage. The bold words of freedom had already produced 
tlieir effect upon the crowd of spectators. The dauntless divine, 
William E. Channing, was one of that assembly, and though not 
identified with the Abolitionists, yet in the battle for free speech, 



80 A REVIEW OF THE 

lie could not be au indifferent spectator. His countenance alone 
served to indicate the side lie espoused, and his presence on this 
occasion, more than all else perhaps, gave weight and respecta- 
bility to the abolition cause. After the last named speaker had 
been silenced, all was in considerable confusion for a time, when 
a couple of independent spectators rose, one after the other, and 
remarked, that " the freedom of speech and of the press could 
nemr he surrendered Ijy the sons of the PilfjrimsP Tlie commit- 
tee then adjourned, but the victory was again complete with the 
Abolitionists. And thus ended in Massachusetts all attempts to 
legislate adverse to the demands of freedom. 

One of the methods pursued by the Abolitionists to arouse the 
attention of the American people to the enormit}^ of slavery, 
y/as the petitioning of Congress for its abolition in the District 
of Columbia, in the I^ational Territories, and also for the sup- 
pression of the inter-State slave trade. At an early period in 
the history of the Government, it had been solemnly determined 
that Congress had no jurisdiction over the question of slavery, 
as it existed within the States. But as regards its existence in 
the Federal District and the Territories, it was believed by many 
that Congress had the right to interfere. The points of attack 
for the agitators were therefore limited ; and even as to these 
it was a matter of divided opinion whether Congress had the 
moral right to interpose its authority. The main object, how- 
ever, of petitioning Congress, was to keep alive the agitation of 
the slavery question, in order to educate public opinion up to an 
opposition to the southern institution, and in that manner create 
a sentiment that would effect its overthrow. For this purpose, 
in 1835 and 1836, Congress was flooded with petitions praying 
for the abolition of slavery in the Federal District, in the Terri- 
tories, and also for the suppression of the inter-State slave com- 
merce. These, taken in connection with the excitement that had 
already been aroused by the transmission of incendiary publica- 
tions through the national mails, were the occasion of great 
commotion in Washington, the seat of the General Government. 
The number of the petitioners and the zeal manifested by them 
in such a cause, had the effect of alarming men both J^ortli and 
South as to the safety of the Federal Union. The right of 
petition for a redress of grievances, was one which existed by 
constitutional warrant, and any abridgment of this privilege 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. SI 

should be cautiously and only after full deliberation, adopted. 
As the right generally was viewed, it was one that authorized 
the citizens to petition for the removal of evils affecting them- 
selves, and their section of country. In the case of the Abo- 
litionists, they were asking for the abridgment of the constitu- 
tional and vested rights of citizens equally entitled to the 
protection of the Government as themselves. They were de- 
manding the suppression of slaver}-, where it existed by virtue of' 
law and the constitution ; and in this view. Congress considered 
that the petitioners had transcended their rights. 

It became a matter of long and animated discussion what dis- 
position should be made of these petitions. The presentation by 
James Buchanan, in 1836, of the memorial of the Cain Quarterly 
Meeting of Friends asking for the abohtion of slavery in the 
District of Columbia, brought the question of these petitions 
prominently before Congress. As far as can be gathered from 
the debates in the Senate at that period, no member of this body 
appears to have favored the sentiments of the memorialists. 
The question, however was, how to dispose of the petitions. 
John C. Calhoun expressed the southern view, upon this occasion, 
in the followino- languao-e : 

"We must not permit those we represent to be thus insulted ou this 
floor. He stood prej^ared, whenever petitions Uke these were presented, 
to call for their reading, and to demand that they be not received. 
His object was to prevent a dangerous agitation which threatened to 
burst asunder the bond of the Union. The only question was, how was 
agitation to be avoided? He held that receiving these petitions en- 
couraged agitation, the most effectual mode to destroy the peace and 
harmony of the Union." 

Mr. Buchanan held the conservative attitude on this question, 
and whilst opposed to the sentiments of the petitioners, he denied 
that Co]igress had the right to refuse their reception, and insisted 
that the true method was to act upon and reject them. His plan 
was adopted in the Senate by 34 yeas to 6 nays. Substantially 
the same manner of disposing of these petitions was pursued in 
the House of Representatives. In 1836, on motion of H. L. 
Pinckney, of South Carolina, a resolution was adopted to refer 
all anti-slavery memorials now before the House, or that might 
come before it, to a Select Committee, with instruction to report 
against the prayers of the petitioners, and the reasons for so 
doing. On the 18th of May, 1836, the committee, through Mr. 



83 A REVIEW OF THE 

Pincknej, its Chairman, nnanimously reported a series of resolu- 
tions, the last of which was as follows : 

'■^Resolved, That all petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions or 
papers, relating in any way or to any extent whatever to the subject of 
slavery or the abolition of slavery, shall, without being either printed or 
referred, be laid upon the table, and .that no further action whatever 
shall be had thereon." 

The above resolution was adopted by 11 Y yeas to 68 nays, the 
latter being chiefly Whigs from the free States. Resolutions 
to control or allay the abolition excitement were adopted annually 
by nearly similar votes to the above until 1840, when the sub- 
stance of these was incorporated amongst the standing rules of 
the House of Representatives. The rule known as the twenty- 
first, which excluded the abolition petitions remained in force 
until December, 1845, when through the persistent efforts of 
John Quincy Adams it was finally rescinded. 

The northern AVhigs, in the main, had opposed these resolu- 
tions as too strongly violating the right of petition. Many- of 
the Whigs from the free States were hostile to the avowed prin- 
ciples of the Abolitionists ; but they became their allies, so far 
as to strive for their right of petition, an invaluable advantage to 
them at this stage of the controversy. The privilege became a 
shield, under the cover of which many an unavowed Abolitionist, 
Avas able to make assaults upon southern institutions. The divis- 
ion of parties upon this question serves to show why it was that 
the Abolition element of the Korth still clung to the Whig 
instead of the Democratic party. 

On this question, Thaddeus Stevens, though not yet become a 
national legislator, was one of the most ardent advocates of the 
constitutional right of petition ; and that such was his position 
he during these congressional contests, gave frequent testimony 
in his speeches in the Pennsylvania Legislature and elsewhere. 
Whilst a member of the Legislature, at Harrisburg, so enthusi- 
astically did he champion the abolitionists right of petition, and 
their free mail privilege with other citizens, that the contest on 
these questions for a time would have seemed as if transferred 
from the Halls of the National Congress to those of the Penn- 
sylvania Assembly. And in this manner it was that he had 
much to do in imparting tone to the northern Whig members of 
Congress in their resistance to the demands of the South. Thus 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 83 

the propriety of incorporating, in a work treating of Mr. Stevens, a 
view of the anti-slavery movement, that preceded liis entry into 
Congress is seen, when his influence as a molder of public senti- 
timent is considered. But for such as he there would have been 
no movement to call forth the action of Congress and of State 
Legislatures as we have observed took place. Mr. Stevens could 
with truth have remarked of the great social convulsion and 
gathering revolution of his country, " qiioimm pars magna fuiP 



84 A REVIEW OF THE 



CHAPTER VI. 

REMOVAL OF MR. STEVENS TO LANCASTER. HIS SUCCESS AS A LAWYER 
AND HIS MOVEMENTS AS A POLITICIAN. 

Notwithstanding Mr. Stevens, up to 1842, had mingled con- 
siderably in politics, having been repeatedly elected, as we have 
seen, to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, yet more 
fortunate than most politicians, he was able to retain a firm 
grasp upon his legal practice. Before his entry upon public life 
at Harrisburg, he had laid the foundation of a fine legal practice, 
and this (tliough absent at the State Capitol during the winter 
months) rather continued to increase than diminish. The obstacle 
with many lawyers, who would willingly enter into politics is, 
that doing so breaks up their business, and having little or 
nothing to fall back upon, they choose rather to keep out of the 
entanglements of political life. I^ot many American statesmen 
have ever been distinguished as lawyers, and this because but few 
possess the varied talents that are adaj)ted for these different 
careers. A man may be admirably suited for the politician, and 
yet would find himself unable to cope with the weighty men 
who try the important causes in our civil and criminal courts. 
And on the contrary, not every successful lawyer would shine 
upon the floors of Congress, or even in the Halls of our State 
Legislatures. A peculiar structure of mind is needed for each of 
these pursuits ; and he whose qualities fit him for the one, often 
finds something lacking when he enters upon the other. Mr. 
Stevens, however, had qualities that enabled him to attain a 
front position, whether at the bar or in the halls of legislation, 
and yet it cannot be denied that he most of all towered at the 
bar. It was in this calling that his best energies were expended ; 
and here also many of his most intellectual victories were achieved. 
After the termination of his services in the Pennsylvania Leg- 
islature, several motives contributed to induce him to remove from 
Adams and locate in Lancaster County. His practice at the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 85 

Gettysburg bar could in no probability ever become so profitable 
as lie might secure in a county so wealthy and populous as Lan- 
caster. Besides the fine field offered in this latter place for the 
practice of his profession, it was a county strongly of his political 
sentiments, and this was a consideration in his view not to be 
overlooked. These, no doubt, were amongst the leading motives 
that induced his removal from Gettysburg to Lancaster City. 
It was in August, 1842, that he reached this latter place, and he 
immediately opened an office and began the practice of the pro- 
fession in his new home. Some time prior to his arrival, it had 
become known that he intended to change his location, and cer- 
tain articles appeared in the Lancaster papers, eulogizing Mr. 
Stevens as a man of towering abilities, and as a lawyer of rare 
sagacity and shrewdness. His arrival soon became known 
amongst the people of Lancaster County, and it is related that 
many of them came to the County-seat to obtain a sight of the 
man of whose fame they had already heard so much. He was 
kindly received in his new location by the citizens generally, 
although in the main bearing the reputation of being a tricky 
and unscrupulous politician. His extraordinary talents were 
upon all sides conceded ; and this reputation procured for him 
kind and courteous treatment amongst all classes. He was, most 
of all, viewed with suspicion by the members of the bar, who 
are never disposed to look with favor upon new arrivals in the 
profession, and such as may divide business with themselves. 
But in Mr. Stevens they saw more than an ordinary additional 
attorney who was come to secure amongst them his livino- at the 
bar. In him they recognized a man ready and competent to cope 
with the ablest of them in litigious warfare ; and one who might 
even be disposed to wrest the sceptre of superiority from the most 
distinguished of their number. It is not strange, therefore, that 
his arrival in Lancaster was anything but agreeable to the wishes of 
the members of one of the oldest and most renowned bars of Penn- 
sylvania. But gifted as he was with the sagacity needed in situa- 
tions such as he was then placed, he did not seem to observe the 
jealousy of his brother barristers,- but simply attended to his own 
business, as if altogether unconcerned for their opinions reo-ard- 
ing himself. The jealousy was most intense on the part of the 
older lawyers, those who had taken the lead in business prior to 
his arrival. With the younger members of the profession he 



86 A REVIEW OF THE 

was rather an object of esteem ; for as tliey did not feel them- 
selves able to compete with him, they were disposed to admire 
liim rather than those who were jealous of his superior ability. 

Samuel Parke, Reah Frazer, William B. Fordney and John 
R. Montgomery were amongst the leading Lancaster lawyers of 
that period. There were besides, many others of considerable 
legal ability. The Lancaster bar had for years held the rank of 
one of the first in the State of Pennsylvania. Many names of 
wide repute had practiced in the old inland city — James Hop- 
kins, Molton C. Podgers, Jasper Slaymaker, "William Jenkins? 
James Buchanan, Amos Ellmaker and George B. Porter, had all 
gained their reputations, as practitioners, at this old bar of German 
Pennsylvania. These last named had chiefly retired from practice 
when Mr. Stevens made his appearance in his new location, 
Benjamin Champneys was upon the bench, but shortly afterwards 
resigned this position, having been nominated by his party for the 
State Senate, to which he was also elected. His place was filled 
shortly after his resignation by the appointment of Ellis Lewis, a 
lawyer of deep reading, and Avithal, a man of rare native sagacity. 

At the August Sessions, in 1842, the first at which Mr. Stevens 
made his appearance, he volunteered his services in behalf of a 
colored man from Columbia who was indicted for assault and 
battery with intent to kill. This was the first case in which he 
appeared before a Lancaster County jury, and he handled it with 
great ability, but the evidence being too clear, his client was con- 
victed and sentenced to an imprisonment for five years. His 
fixed reputation immediately brought him business, and it was 
not long till he had an opportunity of grappling with the leading 
men of the Lancaster bar. Their first encounters with him 
exhibited most intense feeling, and their weapons not always 
hurled with courtly grace, sped as if impelled with savage malig- 
nity. One of the first who met the new Achilles of the bar, in 
an important civil case was Benjamin Champneys, who, before 
his elevation to the bench, had ranked as one of the ablest lawyers 
of the State. Those who relate the circumstances of this trial, 
and the fierce combat of words it elicited, have likened it to the 
fatal scene between Hector and the conquering Pelides. The 
contest was warm, vigorous and spirited ; the dexterous combat- 
tants hurled and counter-hurled, parried and counter-parried the 
weapons, that flew across the arena of forensic strife ; but tho 



POLITICxVL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 87 

superior prowess of the adventurous kniglit, though in the terri- 
tory of his antagonist, soon convinced all observers that whilst 
victory might not in this encounter perch uj)on his banner, yet 
that the claim of dominion would surely pass to the invadino* 
chevalier of the bar. This first encounter but gave assurance 
that others to follow would be with like result, for one after 
another, of the old knights of the Lancaster bar were met and 
stript of the fame they had long worn with credit, and the exult- 
ant warrior rode triumphant over the new field of his conquests 
and future fortune. In six months after Mr. Stevens arrived in 
Lancaster, there was no meaiber of that bar that dared to dispute 
his intellectual and legal kingship. He was crowned by connnon 
consent, and wore the diadem to his grave. 

At the first session of the Supreme Court, held at Harrisburg 
in May, 1843, after his location in Lancaster, ho appeared in four 
of the six cases from Lancaster County, that ■^^'•ere tried at that 
time. He was also engaged with Meredith, of Philadelphia, at 
the same term, in the important case of the Commonwealth vs. 
the Pennsylvania Canal Commissioners. A ^u^cess such as this has 
scarcely a parallel in history. A new law_yer locating in a strange 
county, without friends or social influence, and taking the lead at 
a bar where there were several able, experienced and accom- 
plished members of the profession, is one of those events of history 
that have rarely transpired, and which will be as seldom repeated. 
Such marvelous success, more than all else, stamps him who has 
accomplished it as one of the prodigies of creation. In May, 
1844:, at the following session of the Supreme Court held in the 
same place, out of eight cases from Lancaster County Mr. Stevens 
appeared in six of them, besides being employed in two from 
Adams and also one from Franklin County. His practice was 
now become very large and lucrative, and ranged for years from 
twelve to fifteen thousand dollars per year. He was em]3loyed 
in many of the most important suits tried in different parts of 
the State. 

The custom of making lengthy speeches before the court and 
jury, was one of long standing with the Lancaster lawyers, 
before Mr. Stevens located in their midst. When a cause was to 
be tried, they were in the habit of bringing into the court room, 
law books by the wheelbarrow load and piling them upon the 
tables, and reading one authority after another for the support of 



83 A EEVIEW OF THE 

the plainest and most common principles of the science. Some- 
times a case would consume a day or more in the arguments of 
legal points, that were little illuminated by the long and tedious 
discussion. The custom was an old one and inherited from their 
predecessors ; and the lawyer who should not have conformed to 
it, would have lost, in the opinion of his client, the credit of 
possessing the requisite legal knowledge for the trial of an im- 
portant case. It remained for the new dictator cf the bar to 
abolish the pernicious habit of speech-making by the day, and 
long-winded arguments. After Ellis Lewis was appointed to the 
bench, Stevens having a case for trial came into coui't one morn- 
ing and observed the tables stocked with law books, and his 
legal adversary busily engaged in looking them over and j)repar- 
ing them for citation. Judge Lewis was already upon the 
bench, but the court had not yet been formally opened. Stevens 
remarked, loud enough to be distinctly heard, "What are all 
tliese books for?" Lewis replied, that he believed they were to 
be used on the trial of the case now before the (30urt. Stevens 
rejoined that He " did not know who wanted to listen to the 
reading of all those books." Lewis then remarked: "Mr. 
Stevens, you are something of my opinion ; that a lawyer should 
carry the law in his head and not ahvays depend on his books." 
Tlie opposing counsel heard all this conversation, and its effect 
was magical. It was the last time the tables were crowded witli 
law books upon the trial of a case. Afterwards only sucli books 
were produced as contained authorit}^ directly applicable to the 
points at issue before the court in the case then being tried. Mr. 
Stevens never made lengthy speeches before either the court or 
jury in the trial of cases in which he was concerned ; and in this 
he was also imitated hy the other members of the bar. The 
making of long speeches soon disappeared, and no regrets were 
ever felt for the departure. 

Mr. Stevens was gifted with a remarkable memory. In the 
trial of a cause he a- ery rarely wrote down any of the evidence, 
as is customary with ordinary lawyers, trusting to their memory 
for the remembrance of all the important facts required in their 
arguments before the court and jury. He possessed the rare 
faculty of being able to perceive, as if by intuition, the real 
pomt of every case ; and all his efforts in the elicitation of evi- 
dence was to support this view of it. Instead of wasting liig 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. 89 

time in drawing out of the witnesses all the possible evidence, 
and exhausting his energies in writing down the same, Mr. 
Stevens, having a clear conception of the point to be suj^ported, 
simply sought for evidence for this purpose. He rarely or never 
took notes of the evidence, but often made a few strokes to 
induce the opposing counsel to suppose that he was doing so. 
But his memory was so powerful that often when a dispute arose 
among counsel, as to the exact language used by a witness, ho 
would appeal to the judge's notes ; and in such instances he was 
found almost invariably accurate in his recollection of the evi- 
dence. Had his memory not been so powerful as it was, he 
should surely have proved a failure as a lawyer, for he neither 
wrote with rapidity nor was his chirography even to himself, 
much less to others, always legible. 

In his legal arguments he likewise confined his attention, in the 
main, to the turning point of his case, and brought it out in all 
the clearness which his great ability was capable of doing ; and to 
this method he was more indebted, perhaps, for his splendid suc- 
cess in his profession than to any other reason that might be 
named. In this particular, his legal sagacity may in a sense be 
compared with the strategy of the great INTapoleon who was in 
the habit of concentrating all the force of his assaulting columns 
upon one point of the enemy's lines, and this being broken, rout 
and disorder followed. Stevens, in like manner, as it were, by 
being able to see the point upon which a case must turn, and by 
so shaping the testimony as to make it bear directly in support of 
that position, was able to carry the victory over an opponent less 
dexterous than he, in the marshalling and argumentation of the 
evidence. Hence, though a remarkably successful lawyer, he 
never wearied the court with his arguments, nor the jury by a 
tedious recapitulation of useless evidence. 

Upon one occasion, on the trial of a cause, one of his witnesses 
had detailed important testimony consisting of a statement of 
facts that had transpired many years in the past. This witness 
was subjected to a rigid cross-examination by the opposing coun- 
sel, with the view of impairing his testimony, by showing his 
deficient recollection of facts altogether of no consequence, and 
having no bearing upon the trial of the case, and only intended 
to perplex the witness, and produce the impression upon the jury 
that his evidence was unreliable. Mr. Stevens, seeing the delu- 



90 A REVIEW OF THE 

sion that was attempted to be produced, utterly discomfited his 
legal antagonist by simply propounding in his humorous tone, 

(itself revealing his design) the following question : " Mr. , 

had you a pin in your coat collar that morning ? " The court 
and jury at once saw the hit, and the effect was damaging to his 
adversary. His ability to disconcert an opposing attorney, in a 
trial, by some witty remark, as by asking a witness a question 
eliciting laughter, was of incalculable value in his professional 
career. Ridicule, which is often more potent than argument, he 
had entirely at his command. All these appliances of his intel- 
lectnal ability gave him an advantage over other men equally able 
and. learned as himself, but unendowed with mental traits of this 
nature. 

As regards the knowledge of law Mr. Stevens was not so 
remarkable. There were other lawyers in Lancaster who were 
quite as well if not better read in their profession than he ; his 
great strength was with the jury in being able to present the strong 
points of a case in a more powerful manner than it was the faculty 
of most other lawyers to do. Before the Supreme Court of 
Pennsyh'ania, he could scarcely be said to be more successful than 
any other able well-read lawyer. His consciousness of ability 
gave him confidence in himself, and he was ready to express an 
opinion upon almost any case without examination. Owing to 
this disposition he allowed careful lawyers, who examine their 
ca" s before giving an opinion upon them, the opportunity of 
c x-apping him and carrying cases against him, often with ease. 
There have been instances where, having no confidence in a case, 
he allowed the whole management of it in the Supreme Court to 
a colleague, and the latter was successful in opposition to his 
opinions. His great power as a lawyer, consisted in his being able 
to influence ordinary minds and control them to his advantage. 

Some of Mr. Stevens' finest and most eloquent speeches as a 
lawyer, were those made on trials in defense of fugitive slaves. 
Even before his arrival in Lancaster, he was widely known as a 
most violent opponent of southern institutions ; and from his 
settlement in Lancaster County, he was almost uniformly retained 
in the defense of the fugitives. It was not every lawyer, at that 
period, that desired to be employed in the defense of a case of 
that character. The slave master was fortified by legal enact- 
ment ; and the Constitution guaranteeing the surrender of f ugi- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 01 

tives from service, public opinion generally sanctioned the 
3nforcement of the law. It was only the extreme Abolitionists 
who dared to resist the claims of the master ; bnt these, as 
)^et, had little influence, neither of the great political parties of 
the country having espoused even their moderate principles as 
national organizations. On one occasion, a negro had been 
brought before Judge Lewis in Lancaster, under the Pennsyl- 
vania Act of 1826, and there being no evidence to show that he 
was a slave, he was discharged. Mr. Stevens was employed in 
this case by the friends of the negro. After the discharge, the 
slaimant was advised to have the negro re-arrested under an old 
Act of Congress, which required no evidence except the oath of 
the owner of the slave. As soon, therefore, as he was discharged, 
m officer took him in custody upon a M'rit issued by Alderman 
Osterloe. Stevens, having been informed of this, went before 
the magistrate ; and his speech before this officer is said to have 
been one of the finest gems of eloquence ever delivered by him 
in Lancaster. The negro, however, was discharged by the mag- 
istrate, after official evidence of the former trial before the court 
iiad been certified to him. 

But it is as a politician that Mr. Stevens is most widely known ; 
md of his actions in this particular it remains for us to speak, 
^ince the period of his removal from Gettysburg to Lancaster. 
A.S soon as he had settled in his new home, a circle of politicians 
fathered around him and deferred to him at once as their cou^- 
■ellor and adviser. Those who flocked to his standard were p<_ -. 
:icians for the most part of the Anti-Masonic persuasion, who 
lad chiefly lost position in their party, and who wanted a leader 
:o make head against those who controlled the affairs of the 
30untry. Anti-Masonry had for years been simply a name, the 
^reat majority of those who had once rallied under its banner 
were attached to the AVhig party, now risen to national importance 
md respect, under the leadersiiip of Clay and Webster. Stevens 
liimself had for years been nominally attached to the Whig 
party, and had, in 1840, supported Harrison for President. 

"In the great campaign of 1840, Mr. Stevens took a decided 
stand in favor of the ' Hero of the Thames.' For months 
before the nomination of Harrison, it was understood throughout 
Pennsylvania, that Mr. Stevens was to have a seat in the Cabinet. 
That Harrison had selected him for Post-Master General is known 



93 A REVIEW OF THE 

with certainity, but tliroiigli the open opposition of Clay and the 
wavering of Webster, the appointment was given to Granger. 
Stevens never forgave Webster for the part he took in this 
transaction."* 

But tliough united to the Whig party, Mr. Stevens found 
himself powerless in this organization. Having showed himself an 
ardent Anti-Mason, he encountered violent antipathies amongst 
the Whigs on account of old animosities aroused by his course 
against the ancient order. He was besides, viewed by the great 
body of the Whig leaders as too violent and impracticable a man 
to be entrusted with the management of the party affairs. Even 
before leaving Adams County, this was the opinion generally 
entertained of him by the leadiog minds of his own party. He 
was able to control in a measure the party organization in Adams 
County, but he met with strenuous resistance amongst his political 
friends as soon as he attempted to influence beyond the bomids 
of the county. But for this resistance there is little doubt but 
he would have appeared in the State Senate of Pennsylvania, and 
also in Congress, whilst a citizen of Gettysburg, l^o sooner, 
therefore, had he appeared in Lancaster than the same Whig 
opposition met him, and was potential in keeping him in the 
political background of his party. By the fall of 1843 a suffi- 
cient nucleus of strength, however, had gathered around him, as 
to induce him to believe that he might inaugurate the political 
game with his Whig friends for the control of Lancaster County. 
Lie dared not to stand idle. He must act unless he chose to remain 
a zero ujDon the chess-board of political strategy. Having 
no strength in his own party, his first aim was to secure 
such. Most of those who operated with him were equally 
ignored by the Whig leaders, and, therefore, there was nothing 
to be lost in making an effort to obtain that recognition which 
they sought. 

• It was resolved, at the suggestion of Mr. Stevens, to make an 
effort to revive the Anti-Masonic party in the county. It cannot 
be supposed that a man of his sagacious mind, could have believed 
that this was possible, at a period when the old organization had 
years ago sunk into obscurity, and was already well nigh forgotten. 
But it served in this case as the basis of a movement to divert 



Biographical History of Lancaster County, pp. 582, 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. 93 

otes from the Whig party in tlie county. The object hoped to 
e gained by this, was to withdraw sufficient strength from the 
ontrolhng Whig party, so as to permit the Democrats to carry 
be victory in the county. Could the Stevens wing effect this 
bey were then in a condition to dictate the terms of compromise. 
Accordingly, a ticket was placed in nomination, but the Demo- 
rats of the county having been beaten for so long a time, failed 
3 rally in their strength at the October election of 1843, and 
be Whigs again carried the victory by a considerable majority. 
?he new movement polled about 1,400 votes, but falling short of 
ecuring a Democratic triumph, the leaders were prostrated 
eneatli the power of their opponents. Stevens was now fully 
born of any political strength he might have had, and was forced 
or a time to content himself to be simply a voter of the AYhig 
arty, if he chose to remain in it, or to make choice of a new 
rganization with which to act. 

The Whig party of Lancaster County was almost a unit for 
lenry Clay for President in ISll:. About the time that Mr. 
)tevens and his associates were planning the resuscitation of 
k.nti-Masonry in the county, a monster Whig meeting was held 
n Lancaster City, July 29th, 1843, for the purpose of recom- 
iiending their favorite Clay as the Whig candidate for President in 
844. William Hiester presided over this meeting, and speeches 
t^ere made by Morton McMichael, Abraham Herr Smith and' 
thers ; but Mr. Stevens had no invitation to participate in this 
aovement. When Clay was made the nominee of the party it 
ras deemed by the leaders politic to have all their partisans to 
iiite in support of the candidate ; but Stevens being inimical to 
he great orator of Kentucky, Ilarmar Denny was entrusted with 
he task of reconciling him with the nomination. Denny assureci 
im that he was authorized by the Whig candidate to say that in 
ase of his election, " atonement would be made for past wrong." 
t could not be claimed, however, that Mr. Stevens entered into the 
upport of Henry Clay with any enthusiasm, although giving him 
lis public endorsement upon the rostrum and elsewhere. Political 
uccess was clearly his guiding star ; and it is necessary for poli- 
icians to shape their craft so as to sail as much as possible with 
he breeze, otherwise their hopes of fortune would soon end in 
Lisappointment and despair. He made some speeches in the 
ampaign of 1844, and in these placed himseK fairly upon the 



94 A REVIEW OF THE 

platform of tlie ITational Whig party. During tlie campaign he 
was invited with Webster and other distinguished leaders of the 
party, to address the great Whig meeting in Philadelphia ; and 
the assemblage being very large, whilst Webster was speaking to 
the people, another stand was erected at some distance from the 
main platform, and Mr. Stevens was invited thence to address his 
fellow-citizens. He mounted the newly erected rostrum, and 
being gifted with those indispensable qualities of the popular 
Oiiitor, wit and anecdote, he is said to have been able upon that 
occasion to attract to his speaking most of those who had been 
listening to the great Massachusetts statesman. But ardently as 
was Henry Clay supported by his party throughout the country, 
the election resulted in the choice of James K. Polk as President 
of the United States. 

Although Stevens and his followers supported Cla}^ for Presi- 
dent in IS-ii, the division in the party in the county was never- 
theless kept up. There are generally two factions in each party 
in every county ; and that Mr. Stevens was able from the iirst 
to become the dictator of the one of these in the Whig party, is 
evidence of his power as a political manipulator. Although 
greatly in the minority at first, it was the foundation of what 
afterwards obtained the control of Lancaster County, and which 
placed Mr. Stevens upon the highway of his political success. 
• But the weakness of his influence in the county in 1844, was 
apparent in the nomination of John Strohm for Congress, in that 
year. Mr. Strohm had for years ranked as one of the principal 
leaders of the Whig faction opposed to Stevens. As Senator 
from Lancaster County, he was one of those who in December, 
1838, failed to sympathize with Mr. Stevens in his course at Har- 
risburg, during the period of the " Buckshot War;" and who also 
voted for the recognition of the Hopkins' House of Representa- 
tives. To see one with these opinions nominated i;o Congress, 
was galling to Mr. Stevens in the extreme ; but John Strohm was 
a man of unimpeachable reputation ; and whose high regard for 
probity had become proverbial. His course at Ilarrisburg in the 
winter of 1838, had at first subjected him to considerable censure 
from his political friends, even in his own county ; but a reaction 
Boon set in, as the facts became better understood, and his 
action was at lengtli fully endorsed by the majority of the Whig 
party of Lancaster County. His nomination for Congress in 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 95 

1844, was generally, therefore, viewed as an attestation of that 
fact ; as also an evidence of tlie entire approval by his party of 
his whole previous career as a public man. 

Mr. Stevens, in this condition of affairs, could do little else 
than attend to his legal business and gradually strengthen him- 
seK amongst the citizens of the county. His ability as a lawyer 
gradually introduced him to a wide circle of acquaintances ; and 
this had the effect of enhancing his political power. An element 
of political strength, in favor of Mr. Stevens, not to be over- 
looked, was found in the large number of young men who 
studied law in his office and under his instructions. A m-eater 
number of young men studied the elements of the profession 
under his instruction, than with any other member of the bar 
who ever before practiced in the inland City of Lancaster. 
Although not all of these were members of his own political 
party, yet the majority naturally being such, and these being 
greatly devoted to him and his success, were ready upon any 
occasion to buckle on their armor and march to the conflict 
when the interests of their tutor were at stake. But few men 
have ever had the faculty of securing more devoted and more 
ardent followers than he. His students were almost equally 
attached to him, as children to a father ; at least, this was the 
case with a great majority of them. This was not altogether 
unnatural. Young men in the selection of a legal preceptor, 
generally endeavor to choose one whose reputation may enhance 
their own prospect of success by a kind of radiation of fame, as 
it might be termed. Although in the main delusive, yet the 
impression has its weight in the choice of the man with whom 
the profession is, as a rule, studied. In the case of Mr. Stevens, the 
rule also obtained ; and as advantage was anticipated by originally 
selecting him as their instructor, the more they could add to his rep- 
utation by their efforts, would still extend, as they conceived, that 
reflection of fame that might illumine themselves. Of students 
who had studied with Mr. Stevens, or who became associated in 
legal practice with him, and whose influence perhaps more aided 
him in his after political career than any other individuals, were 
Alexander H. Hood and Oliver J. Dickey, both men of admitted 
native capacity. Both of these men were ardently attached to 
Mr. Stevens. The former, a political editor, and also a member 
of the Legislature, had studied law with him, having entered his 



96 A REVIEW OF THE 

office as a student shortly after his arrival in Lancaster ; and the 
latter was the son of one of his old political associates as a mem- 
ber of the Board of Canal Commissioners of Pennsylvania, and 
who as a leader in the Anti-Masonic party, had been strongly 
attached to him. Mr. Dickey visited Lancaster in 1846 and 
became associated with Mr. Stevens in the practice of the pro- 
fession ; and this union proved the fomidation of a life-long 
attachment between them. 

By 18-iS, Mr. Stevens, having extended his acquaintance in all 
parts of the county, felt himself strong enough to aim at the 
nomination for Congress in the Lancaster District. Although he 
had many friends attached to him, he nevertheless had a power- 
ful opposition to combat. The old Whig leaders were mostly 
opposed to his nomination for Congress, as were also the principal 
organs of the party, the Examiner, published by E. C. Darling- 
ton, and the Volksfreund, a German newspaper. But both 
factions of the Whig party in the county had endorsed the nomi- 
nation of Gen. Taylor for President, as the most available can- 
didate that could be presented. This endorsement seemed for 
the time to indicate the complete union of the Lancaster County 
Whigs ; and Stevens was sufficiently sagacious to see the ad- 
vantage to be gained in this lull of the storm. A large Whig 
meeting was held in Lancaster for the purpose of endorsing the 
nomination of Zachary Taylor for the Presidency. Stevens and 
his friends were the strong advocates of the objects of this meet 
ing. Emanuel C. Reighart, an influential Whig, a man of high 
social standing, and one who had never openly committed him- 
self to the interests of Mr. Stevens, assumed at this meeting, in 
the name of the party, and in view of the subsisting harmony of 
all factions, to publicly nominate him as a candidate for Con- 
gress. This had the effect of directing public attention to him, 
as an aspirant for Congressional honors. 

But the leaders of that part of the Whig party which hitherto 
opposed Mr. Stevens were not ready to acquiesce in that kind of 
nomination for a Congressional candidate. It was altogether an 
unusual manner of placing a candidate before the party for this 
office, and besides, there were individuals in their section of the 
party whom they preferred to see elected to Congress. It was 
not to be supposed, therefore, that they would tamely submit 
to a nomination in which the choice of the people had not been 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 07 

consulted ; and especially, where the candidate was a stranger in 
the county, and one who a few years before had been engaged in 
an effort to defeat the nominees of their party. Abraham 
Ilerr Smith, a young lawyer of promise, belonging to one of the 
oldest and most influential families of the county, who had served 
with credit for two sessions in the Pennsylvania House of Rep- 
resentatives, and was just closing a term in the State Senate, was 
induced, to become a candidate for the Congressional nomination 
in' opposition to Mr. Stevens. Candidates at that period were 
generally nominated in conventions of their party, the delegates 
to which were elected by the party votes in the different 
districts. Primary elections were, therefore, in accordance with 
this recognized rule of the party, held all over the County of 
Lancaster, and the respective friends of one or the other candi- 
date returned to the convention. In several of the districts 
special instructions had been given to the delegates for which one 
of the two candidates they should cast their votes. Bv the 
returns from the several districts, Mr. Smith appeared as having 
received a clear majority of the delegates of the county, and his 
nomination before the assembling of the convention was by himself 
and his friends regarded as quite certain. The balloting in the 
convention, however, disappointed the anticipations of all parties, 
and Mr. Stevens was nominated by one of a majority. Some of 
the delegates in the convention from one or more of the districts, 
violated their instructions by A^oting for Mr. Stevens, thus giving 
him the Congressional nomination, according to the accepted rules 
of the party. 

What peculiar agencies contributed to this first nomination of 
Mr. Stevens for Congress, it is not within the reach of history 
definitely to determine. The trait of character, as given by Al- 
exander TI. Hood in his sketch of Mr. Stevens, in the Biograph- 
ical History of Lancaster County, may have somewhat contributed 
to the result : " Beggars of all grades, high or low, are very quick 
in finding out the weak points of those on whom they intend to 
operate ; and Mr. Stevens was always, but more particularly when 
he was a candidate, most unmercifully fleeced. This trait was 
the cause of injury to the politics of this country. Before he 
was nommated for Congress, no one here thought of spending 
large sums of money in order to get votes. ]N^ow, no man, what- 
ever his qualiflcations, can be nominated for any office, unless 



1)8 A REVIEW OF THE 

lie answers all demands made upon lilm, and forks over a greater 
amount than any one else will, for the same office. It is a most 
deplorable state of things, but the fact is not to be denied."* 

Some reflections, are in this connection submitted, as explana- 
tory of conduct that has attached odium to the character of Mr. 
Stevens, but which rather flowed from the spirit of the times in 
Avhich he lived. All truthful history, is but subsidiary to the 
development of higher forms of culture, and a more enlarged 
comprehension of the mysterious design of creative power. So it 
is believed a delineation of the errors of men and nations but lead 
to a clearer apprehension of the truth, that all are anxiously 
seeking. Men's mistakes, whether wilf uU or otherwise, demonstrate 
the necessity for settled rules of action. The world and its intel- 
ligence are advancing. Perfection in civilization is being more 
nearly approximated, but perhaps will never be fully realized. 
Government is the form of social organism, that has from the 
earliest ages, engaged much of man's attention. Whether the 
product of reason or of divine dispensation is not determined ; 
neither of its primary forms, pure monarchy, aristocracy or de- 
mocracy seem to satisfy the advancing intelligence of the human 
race ; and an eclecticism of these has in modern times amongst civ- 
ilizod nations given the most general satisfaction. But that form 
which is most condusive to the interests of a true civilization, 
£cems as yet, to be but faintly realized. The admirable system 
of government adopted for the United States, by our republican 
ancestors, proved for a period the noblest heritage of reason for 
the management of society, that perhaps the world has ever 
iseen. The G overnment, however, presented by our revolutionary 
forefathers, was itself a combination of the original forms, and in 
such proportions as was then believed would, if properly observed, 
perpetuate liberty, justice and equity to the most distant posterity. 
But there is less real diiference betAveen the forms of govern- 
ment, as regards their practical working, than is popularly sup- 
posed. In absolute monarchies, no one man, though nominally 
so, is entirely supreme. The influence of other intelligent men, 
besides the monarch, control the government. In democmtic or 
republican forms of government, on the contrary, the intellectual 
men of the State are those again in whose hands the jjower 
chiefly resides. The mass of the people may or may not be 

'"Biographical History of Lancaster County, pp. 589. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. 03 

voters, and their power in either case is not far from being 
equally balanced. In the one case they may be made the instru- 
ments of ambitious men for their own advancement and success, 
and perhaps even to the ruin of liberty. As Aristotle and Plato 
taught, society, like the human body, has its various members, 
a'ld in both instances the directive power centers in the head. 
The intellectual men of a nation, under whatever form of govern- 
ment that may be adoj)ted, are those who form the head of the 
State. The great aim in government is that a people be able to 
obtain wise and virtuous rulers, and the form under which these 
can be secured is of less consequence. 

After the adoption of the Federal Constitution, although uni- 
versal white suffrage was generally accepted, yet an intellectual 
supremacy obtained in the selection of the rulers which almost 
ignored the popular voice, save as by way of ratification so con- 
sidered. High toned honor ruled this intellectual conclave of 
both political parties of the Union, and he who Vv'as unworthy of 
initiation into this unorganized circle, was unable to secure the 
objects of his ambition, and hence was an outcast of the body 
politic. The highest principles of chivalry formed the founda- 
tion stones upon which the edifice of rule had been erected, and 
a worthy applicant could scarce fail to receive that recognition to 
which his merits entitled him. As the nation grew and expanded, 
and wealth was accumulated, the people still kept insisting upon 
greater privileges and power, and the rulers gradually yielded to 
their demands. Large numbers of offices, that in the early history 
of the government had been filled by appointment, were subjected 
to popular elections. All this was more nearly meeting the pop- 
ular demand, and abandoning the conservative attitude of the 
framers of our Republic. Popular education, it was urged, by 
those advocating the innovation, was the great anchor of free 
representative government, and that upon this the safety of a 
nation depended. But this refuge itself was based upon the 
assumed equality of men, which, however, all the observation 
and experience of ages had disproved. Equality before the law, 
and equality in fact, are quite different assumj)tion3. 

The seeming effort of modern advance, is entire freedom from 
all restraint, save what is self-imposed. Whether the world in 
the future will attain to this is imknown, but at this time it seems 
not yet prepared for it ; and till such period of perfection arrives 



100 A REVIEW OF THE 

government must be perpetuated. For minds capable of devis- 
ing rules of social order, they sbould, as it would seem, be a rule 
to themselves. The more, therefore, power is shifted from the 
hands of the natural rulers and given into the possession 
of those- requiring a subjecting influence, though this be 
but nominally, to such an extent, is the order of creative 
design reversed, and the principles of corruptive political life 
thence germinate. Herein, then, we have the causes which about 
the period that Mr. Stevens was flrst nominated to Congress, 
induced the introduction of the elements of political corruption. 
Political power was found in the possession of the people more 
than at any former period of history. To obtain political posi- 
tion, it was no longer essential to secure the recognition of that 
chivalric intellectual body of men, that had hitherto so largely 
wielded the power of the nation. Other means about this time 
came to be effective in securing power. Wealth had become the 
most influential agent in society. Honor only influences intel- 
lectual and refined minds ; but that which now proved the most 
potential with the mass of society, was that which the aspirants 
for ofiicial place must employ. 

The last years accordingly, of the history of the American 
Hepublic, have been submitting volumes of testimony as- to the 
capacity of man for self government. The people are being 
surfeited with political power, but the mountains of iniquity and 
corruption that are arising amidst the vast upheaval of ages, are 
shocking the innate moral convictions of the race. But reason 
and right, those stern guides of the world, will yet be called 
upon to render their verdict upon the last phases of republican 
government, and remove the obstructions that still impede 
humanity's, progress, to a higher and a purer civilization. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 101 



CHAPTER VIL 

AJMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND THEIR PRINCIPLES. 

The Anti-Slavery movement in the northern States has ah'eady 
been adverted to, and the excitement occasioned thereby, con- 
sidered in a preceding chapter at some length. It was not long 
after the agitation began until the Abolitionists conceived that it 
was necessary to unite the Anti-Slavery strength into a distinct 
political organization, and this was accomplished in the year 
1840. As early as 1834, William Lloyd Garrison, speaking in 
the LH)erator of the necessities of co-operation for the purpose 
of overthrowing slavery, remarked that, "a christian party in 
politics " was most of all things required. Prof. Charles Folen, 
two years afterwards, suggested the utility of a new political 
party of progress, the leading object of which should be the 
abolition of slavery. A distinctive party for the purpose of secur- 
ing the cherished objects of abolitionism, was in 1839 urged by 
Alvan Stewart upon the Executive Committee of the ISTew York 
State Anti-Slavery Society. All these expressions indicated what 
was becoming a somewhat prevalent opinion amongst the Abo- 
litionists, that if they wished ever to be successful in the eradica- 
tion of American Slavery, they must abandon all connection with 
the old parties, and organize a new one of different principles. 
As before stated, most of those who became avowed Abolition 
ists, came originally from the Whig party, or at least that one 
which was in opposition to the i^ational Democracy. 

All parties that have as yetexistedin America, have belonged to 
one or other of two antagonistic schools, the founders of which were 
Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was a 
member of the convention, which in 1787 formed the Federal 
Constitution ; and in that body had tlie honesty and boldness to 
propose a form of government, copied after that of Great Britain, 
which he ever regarded as the most perfect model of political 
polity which the world had discovered. There were several 



102 A REVIEW OF THE 

other able and intellectual members of the convention, who 
entertained sentiments similar to those of Hamilton, but who, 
for prudential reasons, chose not to avow them too publicly, 
especially as in the state of public opinion that then obtained, it 
was believed that anything but a republican form of government 
was impossible to be established. The great majority of those who 
sat in the convention, were E-epublicans in sentiment themselves 
and besides they perceived that the demands of the age would 
not permit a monarchical constitution to be fixed upon the Ameri- 
can people. They permitted themselves, therefore, to drift with 
the current of popular opinion, and did so, even in cases where 
their judgment entered strong protests to much that was done. 
But as in the natural, so also in the political world, there are 
only two poles of aniagonistic opinion, those of monarchy and 
democracy ; aristocracy being a mere compromise of the ex- 
tremes. Metaphysical philosophy teaches us that every man is 
either a Platonist or an Aristotelian ; and of Americans, it can 
with truth be averred, that every citizen is either a follower of 
Hamilton or of Jefferson in political opinions. The one strove 
for the adoption of a strong, and the other for a liberal Govern- 
ment, based purely upon human consent. 

Alexander Hamilton, and those who sympathized politically 
with him in the Federal Convention, did not obtain that form of 
government which they desired, but having secured what was 
preferable to the old articles of Confederation, they favored its 
adoption as the best that was then attainable. Jefferson was in 
France during the sittings of the convention, and had no imme- 
diate share in the adoption of the instrument of Union that was 
agreed upon, and which was sanctioned for the Confederation of 
the States. His opinions, however, were Avell known, and were 
similar to those of perhaps a majority of the members of the 
Convention of 1787. The dividing line of party sentiment 
was that which separated between those favoring and those oppos- 
ing a monarchical or strong form of government. The Hamil- 
tonian party, in the formation of the Constitution, opposed every 
liberal aspect that was given to the instrument, whilst the 
Jeffersonians equally strenuously resisted the incorporation of 
eyery thing of a centralizing character. When the Constitution 
was at length completed by its framers, it received tlie support 
of all the Hamiltonians, because of the advantages secured in it 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 103 

over the old form of union ; and it also found friends in tlie 
Jeffersonian scliool, amongst those who believed it the best form 
of government that could be secured ; and also on account of the 
generally received interpretation that (as was agreed upon all 
sides) should be applied to it. It cannot be denied, however, that 
the leading opponents to the Constitution were members of the 
Jeif ersonian schooL Their animosity was aroused against it,because 
of the concession of certain powers to the Federal Government, 
which were not possessed under the Articles of Confederation ; 
and such as many of them apprehended might undermine the 
liberty of the States at some future period. With the original 
reasons for the division of the early American parties borne in 
mind, it will be less difficult at any period to discover the descend- 
ants of each, notwithstanding slight intermixtures may have 
been constantly taking place. The distinguishing features of 
each of these early schools of political opinion have from that 
time been clearly discernible in all the different periods of our 
history. 

Those giving the Constitution their hearty support were enti- 
tled Federalists, and those opposing the same were known as 
Anti-Federalists. Jefferson on account of his duties abroad, was 
not involved in the disputes which arose upon the adoption of the 
Constitution. Although friendly himself to the instrument, from 
the known views of its framers, yet the large majority of his 
political followers exerted themselves to their utmost to defeat 
its adoption. But the Constitution was adopted, and as was 
natural, those who had championed it before the people would 
be those who would first be chosen to put it into operation. Gen. 
Washington had been its friend in the Convention, and also before 
the people ; and he was now chosen by a unanimous vote to be 
the iirst who should pilot the new vessel upon the ocean of con- 
flicting American opinion. With that sagacity for which he was 
in a high degree noted, he strove to calm the antagonistic senti- 
ments that he knew prevailed throughout the country, by forming 
his cabinet out of the opposing political schools. Hamilton and 
Jefferson were accordingly placed as the heads of different de- 
partments of the government ; but this, instead of allaying the 
strife, may be viewed as rather having hastened the full develop- 
ment of parties, which followed the iirst election of Washington 
as President of the United States, It was not long till Jefferson 



104 A REVIEW OF THE 

and Ill's party friends discovered, as they believed, tliat tlie aim of 
tlie Hamiltonian leaders was to secure by Constitional interpreta- 
tion what they had failed to obtain in the original adoption of 
the Federal pact. Power was claimed for the general govern- 
ment that had never been granted to it, and which had been 
reserved alone to the States and people, as in the words of the 
charter itself was expressed. "But the Federal, was the party of 
character, wealth and influence, and it required a considerable 
period to divest it of that position of strength and power which 
it had secured in the young Republic. At length, upon the 
enactment of certain obnoxious laws, Jefferson and tlie other 
Southern leaders who had always sympathized with him, and who 
were the warm friends of liberal governmental views, succeeded 
in grasping the reins of the general government. Federalism 
sunk at once, never again to rise in its own name ; but not so its 
principles. These lived and continued with modifications to 
form the elements, of vitality of every oi^anization that was ar- 
rayed against the Jeffersonian party from that period. 

So complete was the overthrow of the Federalists, that 
many years elapsed before any organization was able to make 
a stand against the old party of Jefferson, or the ISTational De- 
mocracy. In 1824, all the candidates for President ran as 
members of the Democratic party, but the election of John Q. 
Adams had the effect of attracting together the disunited 
elements of Ilamiltonianisin, and laying the foundation for 
that structure which became, in a sense, the ISTational Whig 
party. This party was somewhat the expression of that re- 
sistance, that must of necessity manifest itself in opposition 
to the ruling organization ; but whose animating spirit was caught 
from its Federal ancestors. This was true, rather as regarded 
the jSTorthern Whigs ; for in the Southern States, the peculiar 
Hamiltonian principles being exotic, never took deep root. In 
the South the Whig j)arty may be viewed as the embodiment of 
the personal opposition that was marshalled by Clay and other 
distinguished leaders against the administrations of President 
Jackson, Van Buren and others ; and in which principles, though 
loudly heralded, were ever of minor significance. It was owing 
to this fact that only a seeming harmony ever existed between 
the northern and southern sections of the Whig party ; and also, 
that in South Carolina no organization of this name, for many 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 103 

years had any political strength whatever. Anti-Masonry 
another daughter of Federalism, liad its home in the North, and 
in its missionizing tours in the South met but a cold reception. 
The Anti-Slavery political party, which took its rise in the 
Liberty organization in 1840, with Birney as its Presidential 
standard bearer, was also the growth of the centralizing principles 
and the germination of Federalism. 

The leading feature of distinction which characterized tlie 
Democratic party of Jeiferson, was its advocacy of the doctrine 
of State sovereignty, in opposition to the principle of centraliza- 
tion. The Democrats contended that the States were the sov- 
erigns that had framed the general government, and that they 
remained so, although they had delegated specified powers to the 
Federal head, but only such as were clearly enumerated. The Yir- 
ginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798-9, the former drafted 
by Madison, and the latter by Jefferson, explicitly set forth the 
doctrine that the general government was one of limited powers, 
and that the States would not be bound to yield acquiesence in 
the enactments of the Federal authority in an instance where the 
power assumed, was clearly usurped, and did not come with- 
in those delegated in the Constitution. This doctrinal assertion 
of principles, from the two leading statesmen of the old Kepub- 
lican party, was made at a time when it was charged that the 
Federal party had violated the Constitution in the passage of 
certain obnoxious measures ; and the principles thus enunciated 
in those resolutions from that time forward became the recognized 
democratic creed, which was affirmed and- re-affirmed in nearly 
every State and National Convention of that organization that 
was afterwards held. The doctrine was boldly anounced, as tlie 
general understanding of all parties, who had participated in the 
formation of the Federal Constitution, and at a period when the 
principal actors who had taken part in its formation and adoption 
were yet living, and able to controvert any assertions thus made 
had they been false and unsupported by facts. But the doctrines 
so set forth remained uncontradicted, an incontestible evidence in 
itself that they were sustained in historical verity ; and especially, 
as all this occurred at a time when it was in the power of a party 
whose principles the resolutions opposed, to have disproved their 
assertions had they been able to have done so. 

The concession in the Constitution to the general government 



lOa A REVIEW OF THE 

of the power to execute its own enactments upon tlie citizens of 
the States, was that feature of the Federative compact, which 
rendered it so vastly superior to the articles of Confederation 
that preceded it. This, in the words of De Tocqueville, was : 
*' A wholly novel theory, which may be considered as a great 
discovery in modern political science. In all the Confederations 
which preceded the American Constitution of 1789, the allied 
States, for a common object, agreed to obey the injunctions of a 
Federal Government ; but they reserved to themselves the right 
of ordaining and enforcing the execution of the laws of the 
Union. The American States, which combined in 1789, agreed 
that the Federal Government should not only dictate but should 
execute its own enactments. In both cases the right is the same 
but the exercise of the right is different ; and this difference pro- 
duced the most momentous consequences."* But, in the clear and 
express enumeration of these powers, over which the general 
government Avas alone to exercise authority, the Jcffersonian 
State right Republicans felt that their safety rested. They will- 
ingly conceded that within these prescribed limits, the Federal 
power was supreme over the States, but not beyond those bounds. 
The various limitations of power had been agreed upon with 
great care and deliberation ; and the several boundaries of author- 
ity, both ^National and State, were intended to be steadily and 
scrupulously observed. 

The institution of slavery was one over which the general 
government had no authority. It was altogether a matter for 
State regulation, and was so conceded by the early Etatesm.en of 
all political parties. The movement of Abolitionism in the 
Korth; with the consequent rise of the Liberty party in 1840, 
iilthough engendered in humanitarian motives, was nevertheless a 
direct avowal that all constitutional rights of the southern people 
must yield to the behests of the new party, as soon as it should be 
a.ble to grasp the reins of the Federal Government. It was thus a 
threat made against all constitutional government, in which the dan- 
ger did not alone consist in the determination to wrest from the 

o 

eouthern people so much property as was invested in their negro 
slaves. If national compacts and plighted faith must bend before 
the will of majorities, then constitutional governments become a 
failure, and a despotism of numbers is installed in their stead. 

*De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Vol. I, pp. 481. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 107 

i constitutional government is based upon the will of tlie people 
it the time of its adoption, and if any alteration is at any time 
;ought to be made therein, this must be accomplished in accord- 
mce with the provisions of the original charter. Any other 
nethod of change is revolutionary, equally as if produced by 
he might of armies. The abolition movement, for the over- 
hrow of slavery, was the commencement of the revolution for 
he obliteration of slavery from the United States. The insig- 
lificant vote of a little less than 7,000 for Birney for President, 
n 184:0, seemed to the unreflecting as unworthy of notice ; it was 
>nly to the deep comprehension of John C. Calhoun and such 
-s he, that the real danger w^as fully felt and appreciated. It 
vas the means by which the object to be attained was proposed 
o be accomplished, quite as much as the result itself, that was 
elt as so threatening to the principles of free government. It 
^^as, in short, the announcement of the right of reducing gov- 
irnment to chaos, and out of the anarchy, reconstructing it in 
,ccordance with the passions of the multitude. In principle 
-nd essence, the avowal of the Abolitionists was equally as 
Jarming in one section of the Union as in the other. The 
inly difference was, that in the South, with abolition suc- 
ess, together with the overthrow of constitutional government, 
he rights and privileges of the people of that section must 
ikewise perish in the flames of social convulsion. The Liberty 
larty asserted the right of the people of the North to interfere 
;rith slavery in the southern States, a doctrine before unheard of 
nd in utter violation of the compacts that had formed part of 
be Constitution. The States were separate independent Repub- 
:cs, that for valid reasons had formed a central authority, entrusted 
ath certain specified powers, the better to promote the interests 
f all amongst each other, and with foreign nations. The peo- 
ple of the northern States, had therefore, no more legal or con- 
titutional right to intermeddle with the affairs of those of the 
louth than in the concerns of foreign nations. They might 
ondemn slavery in the South or elsewhere, but when they 
ssumed to dictate to the southern people, or to organize a party 
f aggression against the constitutional rights of any of the 
itates, they became revolutionists equally as had they rose with 
rms in their hands to overthrow the existing constitution. But 
lie Abolitionists chose to confine their warfare within the moral 



103 A REVIEW OF THE 

arena ; and tlnis they escaped tlie perpetration of tlie crime of 
treason, of which an armed assault would have made them guilty. 

The whole Anti-Slavery movement in all the various channels 
in which it flowed, took its rise in Ilamiltonian principles, which 
demanded the subordination of all the States" to the Federal 
Government. One supreme central authority was demanded, 
which should dictate what institutions and laws should, and what 
should not exist in the several States. That system would inaugu- 
rate a national government of strength, one having unity of pur- 
pose and efiiciency in its administration. Such had ever been 
tlie fond hope of the old Federal leaders, and of all such as 
believe that the principles of monarchy are essential for the gov- 
ernment of men and nations. But, besides the attitude and 
action of the pure Anti-Slavery party, which was organized in 
18-iO ; in order to see the revolutionary movement as it progressed, 
it is necessary to follow, in connection therewith, the course of the 
Whig party, until its iinal overthrow as a national organization. 
On the question of slavery, the Whig party, North and South 
was never harmonious ; and it was alone upon other questions, 
that it was able to unite in opposition to the Democracy, the 
23arty of unadulterated States right sovereignty. The Southern 
Whigs, from the earliest agitation of the slavery question, were 
about in sentiment with the JS^ational Democratic i^arty, save 
that as politicians, on unimportant questions, they would at times 
veer into seeming opposition to the slavery interests in their 
section ; and they did so in order to bring themselves more into 
harmony with their northern brethren, already dominated by aboh- 
tion sentiment. 

The annexation of Texas was one of those questions that 
severed the AVhig party into a sectional division. John Q. 
Adams, a Whig Member of Congress, was one of the flrst to 
sound, as early as 1837, the bugle of northern anti-slavery oppo- 
sition against the project of annexing the new Republic of Texas 
to the United States. Texas had secured her independence in 
the memorable battle of San Jacinto, fought April 21st, 1836. 
In March, 1837, the United States recognized the independence 
of the new sister Eepublic. Daniel Webster, in his speech' of 
March 15tli, 1837, at JSTiblo's Garden, expressed his entire disap- 
probation to the annexation of Texas, basing his opposition 
to it on the ground that it would be extendins: the boundaries of 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 109 

[aveiy. Avowed Abolitionists liad first sounded tlie note of 
pposition on the Texas question, and it was taken up by tlie 
Vh\g politicians of tlie ]^ortli for the purpose, mainly, of secur- 
ig j)olitical capital from northern sentiment on the slavery ques- 
on, as had happened in the interests of Federalism during the 
3ntest on the admission of Missouri into the Union. The resist- 
iice thus early manifested in the North against the annexation^ 
f Texas, had the effect of delaying operations for some years, 
3r the consummation of the measure. It was only when the 
titi-slavery agitation had advanced to such a stage as almost to 
ave divided the country into two sectional parties, indicated hy the 
[ason and Dixon boundary, that annexation began again seriously 
) be discussed. That such a division had taken place between 
le l^orth and South was undeniably true as regards the Whig 
arty, for although Harrison had been elected President by the 
V higs, yet this was more owing to the great personal popularity 
f the candidate, than because of any unity of sentiment anion o'st 
is partisans. 

It was during the administration of John Tyler, the successor 
I William Henry Harrison, that the incorporation of Texas 
ito the Union was fully resolved upon by southern statesmen, 
■ho saw in this measure how they could perpetuate the balance 
f power between the northern and southern sections of the 
"nion. Leading members of the Whig party in the South were 
;[ually ardent for the admission of Texas as the Democrats, 
though well aware of the antagonism generally entertained 
)wards the measure on the part of their political brethren of 
le North. The question came to be one of importance in the 
residential election of 1844. It, and the tariff, were the leadiiiir 
uestions of that political struggle. Aspirants for Presidential 
onors had a delicate task, therefore, in dealing with these national 
uestions ; and in this struggle the strength of parties was so 
5^ually balanced that the writing of a letter, it is believed, turned 
le scale of victory from one side to the other. Martin Yan Buren 
early sealed his defeat as the candidate of the Democratic party 
y his letter written to William H. Hammet, of Mississippi, in 
hich he took grounds against Texan annexation. The crafty 
tatesman of Lindenwald thought to secure his nomination by 
itering to the northern sentiment of opposition to the spread of 
avery; but found himself entrapped by his lei'er, and which 



110 A EEVIEW OF THE 

forever sealed hh hopes of future Presidential promotion. Tlie 
Democratic party, in its ISTational Convention, which met at Bal- 
timore on May 27th, 1S44, boldly announced its principles on 
the annexation question in the following resolution : 

" Resolved, That our title to the whole Territory of Oregon is clear and 
unquestionable ; that no portion of the same ought to be ceded to Eng- 
land, or any other power ; and that the re-occupation of Oregon and the 
re-annexation of Texas, at the earhest practicable period, are great 
American measures which tlie convention recommends to the cordial 
support of tlie Democracy of the Union." 

The effects of anti-slavery agitation upon northern opinions by 
1844, were conspicuously visible. The body of the public men 
in the North, of both political parties would, as a matter of 
choice, have voted that no more slave States be admitted into the 
Union. They were aware that the enlightened sentiment of the 
age, both in Europe and America, Avas averse to the institution 
as it existed in the Southern States ; and free from all party tram- 
mels they Avould have voted against its extension. There is little 
doubt but that this was the prevailing sentiment of the enlight- 
ened classes of both political parties. Unlike certain Abolition- 
ists, however, they did not regard slavery as a sin, but the steady 
discussion of the question for years had at length produced its 
influence, and they in general looked upon it as somewhat repug- 
nant to their moral convictions. In the Democratic as well as in 
the Whig party, this feeling had considerable strength ; and the 
above resolution of the Baltimore convention, endorsing the 
annexation of Texas, met with opposition from men who upon 
no other c[uestion had ever been found unfaithful to party 
principles. Silas Wright, a prominent Democrat from I^ew York, 
had conspicuously opposed annexation in the United States Senate; 
and knowing that the measure would be endorsed by his party 
in the Presidential campaign of 1844, he declined the nomination 
for Yice-president on the ticket with James K. Polk. Mr. 
Wright nevertheless became the candidate of his party for Gov- 
ernor of Kew York the same year, and in a canvassing speech at 
Skaneateles, he referred to his opposition as unabated, and de- 
clared that he never could consent to annexation. This sentiment 
was loudly applauded in a large Democratic convention held in 
Herkimer, in the autumn of that year. Messi's. George P_ 
Barker, William C. Bryant, John W. Edmonds, David Dudley 
Field and Theodore Sedge wick united in a letter, urging their 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. Ill 

feilow-democrats, wliile supporting Polk and Dallas, to repudiate 
the Texan resolution, and to unite in supporting for Congress 
Democratic candidates hostile to annexation.* 

Henry Clay was the great Southern leader and idol of the 
"Whig j)arty, and had been long pressed by his ardent admirers 
for the Presidency. But for the division on the slavery question 
that had made its way into the "Whig party, he would have been 
nominated for the highest office in the Republic in December, 
1839. The following extract from the Emancipator, an abolition 
journal, explains the condition of the Whig party at that period : 

THE HAERISBURG CONVENTION. 

"Well, the agony ?> orcr, cai'1 Henry Clay is laid upon the shelf ; and na 
man of ordinary intelligence can doubt or deny that it is the anti-slavery 
feeling of the North which has done it, in connection with his own osten- 
tatious and infamous pro-slavery demonstrations in Congress — Praise 
to God for an anti- slavery victory I A man of high talents, of great 
distinction, of long political services, of boundless pei'sonal popularity, 
has been openly rejected for the Presidency of this i\epubliG on account 
of his devotion to slavery. Set up a monument of isrogress there — let 
the winds tell the tale ! Let the slave-holdei"s hear the news. Let foreign 
nations hear it. Let O'Connell hear it. Let the slaves hear it. A slave- 
holder is incapacitated for the Presidency of the United States. The 
reign of slaveocracy is hastening to a close. The injection of Henry 
Clay by the Whig- Convention, taken in connection with all the circum- 
stances, is one of the heaviest blows the monster slavery has ever received 
in this country." 

The remarks of Gai-rison on the rejection of Clay by the Whig Con- 
vention are to the sr.me purport : " All the slave States went for Clay^ 
Had it not been for abolitionism, Henry Clay would undoubtedly have 
been nominated." i 

In the Irrational "Whig Convention, held at Baltimore in 1844, 
the party nominated Henry Clay for President by acclamation. 
His political letters on the Texas question, published in the 
National Intelligencer^ in which he expressed his disapprobation 
to the admission of Texas, had the effect of uniting in his sup- 
port the northern Whigs ; and his real opinions known to his 
southern friends, served to retain them likewise. In his letter 
intended for northern circulation he dextrously struck the key- 
note to northern resistance to annexation in the following 

language : 

" I do not think Texas ought to be received into the Union, as an integral 
part of it, in decided opposition to the wishes of a considerable and 
respectable portion of the Confederacy. I think it far more wiseand im- 

*Greeley's Conflict, Vol. 1, p. 166 



112 A REVIEW OF THE 

portant to compose and harmonize the present Confederacy as it now 
exists, than to introduce a new element of discord and destruction into 
it. In my humble opinion it should be the earnest and constant endeavors 
of American state-men to eradicate prejudices, to cultivate and foster 
concord, and to jDroduce general contentment among all parts of our 
Confederacy." 

This letter of Clay upon annexation was found not to give 
entire satisfaction to all his southern friends, and he was urged to 
make a further statement of his views upon the Texas question. 
Accordingly, on the 16th of August, a letter appeared in the 
North Alctbamian, which had been written by him to friends 
in Alabama. In this letter occurred the following language : 

" I do not think it right to announce in advance what will be the course 
of a future administration, in respect to a question with a foreign power. 
I have, however, no hesitation in saying, that far from having any per- 
sonal objection to the annexation of Texas, I should he glad to see it, 
without dishonor, w^ithout war, with the common consent of the Union, 
and upon just and fair terms." 

This last letter was at once seized upon by the Democrats as 
well as the Abolitionists, as an entire change of base upon the 
part of Clay, and which had no doubt considerable influence 
upon the result of the election. Many have ever believed that 
this letter caused his defeat as President of the United States. 
James G. Birney, the Presidential Abolition candidate of the 
Liberal party, in the same canvass made a handle of Clay's Ala- 
bama letter, to abstract from him anti-slavery votes, and he was 
successful in polling upwards of 60,000. James K. Polk, the 
Democratic nominee, was elected President of the United States, 
and this victory was fairly interpreted as the national endorse- 
ment of the policy of Texan annexation. Congress, acting in 
obedience to the public sentiment, as thus expressed, passed reso- 
lutions for the admission of Texas, and John Tyler affixed thereto 
the Presidential signature March 1st, 1815. 

On the 3d day of March, 1815, President Tyler despatched a 
messenger to deliver to Mr. Donelson charge d' affaires of Texas, 
the joint resolutions of Congress for its admission into the 
Union, and instructing him to communicate the same to the 
Texan officials. The resolutions admitting the Republic as a 
member of the Union, were submitted by the President of Texas 
to a convention of delegates called for the purpose of forming a 
State Constitution, and were assented to by that body in behalf 
of the people on the 1th of July, in the same year ; and thus one 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 113 

more State was added to the number of the existing sovereignties 
of tlie American Union. Tlie Convention of Texas, thereupon 
requested the President of the United States, to oceuj^y and 
establish posts without delay upon the exposed frontier of the 
Republic, and to despatch such forces as might be deemed requisite 
for the defence of the territory and people of the newly-admit- 
ted State. In accordance with this request, an "army of occupa- 
tion " was despatched by order of President Polk, under command 
of General Taylor, and on the 26th day of July, 1845, the 
American standards were unfurled over Texan soil, Tliis move- 
ment, with the measures of annexation transacted between the 
United States and Texas, were regarded by the Mexican govern- 
ment as acts of hostility towards the latter, and preparations 
were made by the Mexican Republic for an appeal to arms. On 
the 5th of March, Gen. Almonte, the Mexican minister at Wash- 
ington, protested against the resolutions of the Federal Congress 
providing for the annexation of Texas, and demanded his pass- 
ports, which were granted him ; and on the 3d of April the Gov- 
ernment of Mexico refused to hold further diplomatic intercourse 
with the United States, and informed'tbe American Minister that 
such intercourse was irreconcilable with Mexican honor, in view 
of the annexation of Texas. The President of Mexico, here 
upon, on the 4th of June, 1845, issued a proclamation declaring 
that the annexation of Texas did not change the relations of 
Mexico towards that Republic, and that she was resolved to 
maintain them by force of arms. Under these circumstances, 
the diplomatic relations were of necessity suspended between the 
two countries, and this state of affairs so continued until the 
commencement of hostilities in 1846. On the 11th of May, 
1846, the American Congress declared that war existed between 
the United States and Mexico, by act of the latter — the Presi- 
dent having: announced that the Mexicans had " at last invaded 
our territory and shed the blood of our fellow citizens on our 
own soil." 

Congress, two days after the reception of this message from 
President Polk, responded by the passage of an act calling out 
50,000 vounteers, and appropriating ten millions of dollars for 
the prosecution of the war with Mexico. The annexation of 
Texas had thus resulted in M'hat from the first had been the re- 
peated prediction of the Whig party ; and although towards the 



114 A REVIEW OF THE 

prosecution of tlie war, tlie Whigs in Congress, in tlie main, voted 
for men and money, yet did so with the greatest rehictance, at 
the same time, stigmatising it as an unjust invasion of Mexican 
rights, and an infringement of inter-national comity. Congress 
remained in session until the 10th of August. In the meantime, 
the encounters between the American and Mexican forces, gave 
assurance that the war could not be of long duration, as a series 
of victories had crowned the American standards from the first 
commencement of hostilities. President Polk believed a treaty 
of peace might be negotiated with the Mexican Government, and 
that by the payment of a sum of money, not only the boundary 
of the Rio Grande, but a considerable acquisition of territory 
might be secured. He accordingly sent a special message to 
Congress on the 8th of August, two days prior to the time fixed 
for the adjournment, asking that an amount of money be placed at 
his disposal for these purposes. A bill was immediately reported 
in Committee of the Whole, making appropriations of $3,000,000 
for the expenses of the negotiation, and $2,000,000 to be used at 
the discretion of the President in making such a treaty. The 
bill seemed on the point of passing through all its various stages 
without serious opposition. After a hasty consultation with some 
friends, David AVilmot, a democratic Member of Congress from 
Pennsylvania, introduced his celebrated j)roviso, and moved to 
add it to the first section of the bill now pending, and which was 
to the effect that no part of the territory to le acquired should 
he open to the introduction of slavery. 

The introduction of the above proviso^ proved a new fire- 
brand cast into the American Congress, as might have been 
readily surmised by its author, had he but chosen to remember 
occurrences of no remote date. Equity demanded that the people 
of the South be treated as equal members of the Conferation, the 
same as those of the I^orth ; and that no discrimination should be 
adopted to exclude them from their equal and constitutional 
rights. Besides, the proviso was in direct violation, if not of the 
words, at least of the spirit of the Missouri Compromise, a compact 
in harmony with justice and sectional equality. 

When the proviso was first offered, it met with the almost 
univei'sal favor of the Eepresentatives from the Korth, doubtless 
(as was likewise the case in the commencement of the Missouri 
struggle) without any intention upon the part of most of those 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 115 

from tlitit section, of violating the riglits of tlieir soutliern 
brethren. So much discussion, however, had at one time and 
another taken place with reference to the power of Congressional 
legislation over the territory now possessed, or hereafter to be 
accjuired, that it came about this time to be generally believed in 
the ]^orth that slavery in the national domain was subject to the 
same control. Quite a different o^jinion, however, had ever pre- 
vailed in the South, as regards the power of Congress ; and in view 
of the intense feeling that had already been engendered in 
the minds of the Southern people on account of the known 
intention of the Abolitionists, the jDroviso w^as at once seized 
upon by them as the greatest possible outrage that could be in- 
flicted upon them. The first vote on the proviso in the House, 
was 80 ayes and 64 nays, only three Democrats from the ITorth 
opposing it. The ISTorth and the South had now fully divided on 
this question, the sectionalizing of representatives having become 
complete upon any issue affecting the institution of slavery. 

The 10th of August, the time for the adjournment of Congress 
arriving, put an end to further discussion, and the appropriation 
sought by the President was not granted. The turbulent scenes 
of the two days, however, that Congress was in session, after 
the introduction of this apple of discord by Mr, "Wilmot, was suffi- 
cient to communicate the inflamation to the people of all the 
Southern States of both political parties, and, in the Legislatures 
of several of these, conditional disunion resolutions were passed. 
*^ Everywhere in the slave States the Wilmot proviso became a 
Gordon's head— a chimera dire — ^a watchword of party, and the 
synonym of civil war and the dissolution of the Union," * 

The application of the Executive was renewed at the next 
meeting of Congress, with this difference that instead of two he 
now asked for three millions of dollars, A second bill was now 
prepared and introduced into the House, and the proviso being 
again incorporated into it, this passed by a vote of 115 to 105, 
The bill being now sent to the Senate, the proviso was stricken 
out by the vote of 31 to 20, and in this shape was returned to 
the House of Representatives where, upon a reconsideration, the 
action of the Senate was concurred in by 102 yeas to 01 nays. 
Thus, after a violent contest in both Houses of Congress, the 



*Beut:oii's Tlui-ty Years View, Vol, 3, p. 



695, 



116 A REVIEW OF THE 

appropriation was granted without any anti-slavery restriction. 
The excitement occasioned by the discussion that grew out of 
the introduction of this proviso, was perhaps the most iiery and 
intense that had ever yet taken place in Congress, and served 
more than all -else to inflame the public mind in both sections of 
the Union. 

After a series of brilliant victories, the conquest of Mexico 
was effected, and the American standards waved over the Spanish 
Republic. The conquest of Mexico was speedily followed by 
the flight of Santa Anna, its President, and peace between the 
two countries was concluded February 2d, 1848, by the treaty of 
Gaudaloupe Hidalgo, by which Upper Calf ornia and Kew Mexico 
were ceded to the United States. This treaty received the ratifi- 
cation of the Mexican Congress May 29th, 1848. The acquisi- 
tion of this new scope of country still increased the national 
domain, and served to add additional complication to the already 
unadjusted difficulties between the l!Torth and South, as regarded 
the government of the national territories. The organization of 
the territories from this period became one of the difficult 
questions before Congress, and this because of the division of 
sentiment on the slavery question which had sundered the two 
sections, as it were, into antagonistic parties. 

But, although the leaven of Abolitionism had already caused 
somewhat of fermentation in the Democratic party, it yet re- 
mained thoroughly national in its principles, and decided in its 
efforts to resist aggressions upon southern rights. A small wing 
of the party in the ISTorth had allowed itself to be led captive by 
free soil principles, which were producing discord in the old 
Jeflersonian ranks. In the State of ISTew York, these principles 
had already produced a schism of the party into two factions, the 
one of which was styled Hmikers^ and the other Barn-'burners, 
In the Democratic Convention, which nominated Gen. Lewis 
Cass and William O. Butler, for President and Yice-president, in 
May, 1848, both factions of the party from Kew York, appeared 
by their delegates, and claimed seats in that body ; and with tlie 
desire of harmonizing the differences both were admitted to seats 
in the convention, each being authorized to cast half the vote to 
which the State was entitled. This served the Barn-burners with 
the excuse which they desired ; and declaring themselves unwill- 
ing to be bound by the decision of the convention, retired there- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 117 

from. After the Free Soilers, Kadieals or Barn-burners liad 
withdrawn, the convention adopted a platform of principles, 
national in its character, and very similar to those of previous 
conventions of the same party. But as to the power of Congress 
over the question of slavery in the territories, which had recently 
come into prominence, the convention declined to commit itself. 
On this question William L. Yancey, of Alabama, submitted the 
following resolution : 

" Resolved, That the doctrine of non-interference with the rights of 
property of any loortion of the people of this Confederacy, be it in the 
States or Territories thereof, by any other tlian the parties interested 
therein, is the true Republican doctrine recognized by this body." 

This resolution was rejected — nays 216, to yeas 36, Its rejec- 
tion was the work of the northern leaders of the party, although 
not so indicated by the vote in the convention. This was the 
first manifest wavering that the Democratic party had shown 
before the abolition sentiment of the North ; and much as the 
leaders of both sections believed in the justice of non-interven- 
tion, those in the ISTorthern States feared to meet their constitu- 
ents, shoidd this be endorsed as a cardinal princijjle. It was a 
cowardice, however, of which no political party should ever be 
guilty. If the principle was right, the resolution should have 
been endorsed, even at the risk of party defeat. 

The AVhig E'ational Convention assembled at Philadelphia, on 
the 8th of June, 181:8, and selected Zachary Taylor and Millard 
Fillmore as its candidates for President and Vice-President. 
Gen. Taylor was made the nominee of his party purely because 
of his supposed availability as a candidate and the great personal 
popularity he had gained in the Mexican war. As he was a 
slaveholder, he was far from being acceptable to the northern 
Whig leaders, but circumstances compelled them to acquiesce in 
his nomination. The disintegration and dissolution of the Wliig 
party were already nearly complete, and but time w^as wanting 
to render it a finality. In this convention the party was unable 
to agree upon a platform of principles. Repeated efforts were 
made to endorse the principle of the Wilmot proviso, but with- 
out success, the motions made for this purpose being successfully 
tabled. The ardent Abolitionists of the party on this account 
took little interest in the election, but feeling themselves power- 
less in the party, they permitted themselves to drift with the 



118 A EEVIEW OF THE 

political ciHTent. Several members of tlie convention declared 
their utter dissatisfaction with the candidates; and so great, in- 
deed, was the smothered opposition that the nominations conld 
not be made unanimous, according to custom. All this opposi- 
tion was stimulated by anti-slavery zeal. Mr. Allen, a delegate 
to the convention from Massachusetts, said that the "Whig j)arty 
was that day dissolved. Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, offered a reso- 
lution that the nominations should be unanimous provided Gen. 
Taylor would pledge himself to the non-extention of slavery 
over free territory. Such a pledge was never obtained ; and if 
it had been, that moment the Whig party would have dissolved. 
Gen. Wilson, of Massachusetts, declared that he would do all in 
his power to defeat the nominee of the convention. " Gen. 
Taylor, though an excellent soldier, had no experience as a states- 
man, and his capacity for civil administration was wholly undem- 
onstrated. He had never voted; had apparently paid little 
attention to, and taken little interest in politics ; and though 
inclined towards the Whig party, was but slightly identified with 
its ideas and its efforts. Nobody could say what were his views 
I'egarding Protection, Internal Improvement, or the Currency. 
On the great question — which our last acquisitions from Mexico 
had suddenly invested with the greatest importance — of excluding 
slavery from the yet untainted Federal Territories, he had in no 
wise declared himself ; and the fact that he was an extensive 
slaveholder, justified a presumption that he, like most slave- 
holders, deemed it right that any settler in the Territories should 
be at liberty to take thither and hold there as property, what- 
ever the laws of his own State recognized as property.""^ 

But the strength of the Abolition sentiment of the North was 
still advancing to more prominent recognition. The schism of 
several of the leading churches into Northern and Southern com- 
munions, beginning with the Methodist Episcopal in 1844, had 
already given an importance to the anti-slavery movement, that 
it had not before possessed. And although the two great parties 
of the country had their Presidential candidates in the field before 
the nation, harmony no longer reigned in the ranks of either. 
The Liberty party had supported candidates for President and 
Yice President in 1840, and in 1844, but was able to di'aw but a 
comparatively feeble vote. 

*Greeley's Recollections, p. 311. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 119 

For the purpose of sliowing the rise of the Free Soil partj 
from Abolition authority, the following extract is submitted : 

" In the midst of these exhortations, the National Convention of the 
Liberty party assembled at Buffalo, October 30th, 1847. Gerrit Smith, 
still a member of the Liberty party, was proposed as a candidate for the 
Presidency. His nomination would have secured the co-operation of the 
Liberty League in his support. But the course marked out by the lead- 
ing men in the convention beforehand, required the nomination of a 
different man from Gerrit Smith. The Liberty party for the first time 
adopted the policy of going out of its own ranks for a Presidential can- 
didate. After debating awhile the question of nominating at all till 
next 3^ear, they nominated Hon. John P. Hale, United States Senator 
from New Hampshire, an independent Democrat, who had certainly done 
himself honor in refusing to do homage to the slave power, and who had 
drawn off a portion of the Democracy of New Hampshire to his sui?- 
port." * * * "But the nomination of Mr. Hale was only a 
temporary one, and answered its temporary purpose. Gentlemen active 
in making it united with otliers of other parties in calling another con- 
vention, which was held at Buffalo, August 9th, 1848, composed of the 
opponents of slaverj^ extension, irrespective of parties and including of 
course, as was designed, large numbers who did not intend to be com- 
mitted to ' the one idea ' of abolishing slavery. On that occasion was 
organized the Free Soil party, in which the Liberty party was designed 
to be wholly absorbed.''* 

The Liberty party was thus, in 1 848, metamorphosed into that 
named Free Soil, through the machinations of Martin Yan Buroii 
and his friends out of revenge to General Cass, who had been largely 
instrumental in ISM, in causing the defeat of the former before 
the Democratic Convention of that year Although the ISTorth was 
not yet fully ripe for the organization of a purely sectional party, 
yet the free soil vote in 1848 indicated that the abolition move- 
ment would take that direction. Horace Greeley, speaking of 
the National Democratic nominations in 1848, says : 

" This ticket was respectable, both as to character and services, yet its 
prospects were marred by the fact, that that faction of the New York 
Democracy, which had been known as Barn-burners or Free Soil men, 
resenting the admission of their competitors to seats in the convention 
had bolted, and refused to be governed by the result. Ultimately, they 
united with the Abolitionists and with sympathising Democrats in other 
States in holding a National\ Convention at Buffalo, which nominated 
Martin Van -Buren, of New York, for President, and Charles F. Adams, of 
Massachusetts, for Vice-president. This ticket, though it obtained no 

*Goodel on Slavery, p. 478. fMr. Greeley should more properly have 
said a Sectional rather than a National Convention, for there were no 
delegates in it except from the Northern States, and the most of those 
who figured in it were secret Abolitionists, whom policy deteri'ed from 
the expression of their honest sentiments. 



130 A REVIEW OF THE 

single electoral vote, blasted the hopes of General Cass and the regular 
Democracy." * 

The distinctive feature of the platform of the Free Soil party 
was opposition to slave institutions, and a desire to abolish or 
restrain slavery wherever this could be constitutionally accom- 
plished. These three principles were laid down : First, that it 
was the duty of the General Government to abolish slavery 
wherever it could be done in a constitutional manner. Second, 
that the States within which slavery existed had the sole right to 
interfere with it ; and third, that Congress can alone prevent the 
existence of slavery in the Territories. By the first of these 
principles, it was the duty of Congress to abolish slavery in the 
District of Columbia ; second, to leave its regulation to the States 
where it existed, and third, to abolish it in territory now free. 

In the sectional aspect of this party lay its danger. Thomas 
H. Benton speaks thus of the Buffalo Convention that nomi- 
nated Yan Buren and Adams : 

" It was an organization entirely to be regretted — its aspect was sec- 
tional — its foundation a single idea — its tendency to merge political prin- 
ciples in a slavery contention. The Baltimore Democratic Convention 
had been dominated by the slavery question, but on the other side of 
that question, and not openly and professedly ; but here was an organi- 
zation resting prominently on the slaveiy basis. And, deeming all such 
organizations, no matter on which side of the question, as fraught with 
evil to the Union, this writer, on the urgent request of some of his politi- 
Cil associates, went to New York to interpose his friendly offices to gtt 
the Free Soil organization abandoned. The visit was between the two 
conventions, and before the nominations and proceedings had become 
final ; but all in vain. Mr. Van Buren accepted the nomination, and in 
so doing placed himself in opposition to the general tenor of his political 
conduct in relation to slavery, and especially in what relates to its exist- 
ence in the District of Columbia. I deemed this acceptance unfortunate 
to a degree far beyond its influence upon persons or parties. It was to 
impair confidence between the North and the South, and to naiTow down 
the basis of party organization to a single idea ; and that idei not known 
to our ancestors as an element of political organizations. The Free Soil 
plea was that the Baltimore Democratic Convention had done the same ; 
but the answer to that was that it was a general convention from all the 
States, and did not make its slavery principles the open test of the elec- 
tion ; while this was a segment of the party, and openly rested on that 
ground, "t 

The election of 1848 resulted in the choice of Gen. Taylor 
for President of the United States, and Millard Fihnore for 



Greeley's Recollections, p. 213. fBenton's View, Vol. II, p. 723. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 121 

Vice-President.. In tlie Congress tliat assembled in December, 
1848, after the- election, the question on the organization of the 
Territories came up, and was debated with great warmth and at 
considerable length. A majority of the House of Representa- 
tives were desirous of excluding slavery from Kew Mexico and 
California, but the Senate being unwilling that this principle 
should be incorporated, no bill, as a consequence, for the organi- 
zation of these Territories was passed at this session. The terri- 
torial question was now become the great subject of dispute 
between the ISTorth and South ; and its discussion was the cause 
of increasing bitterness and alienation between the two sections. 
Wlien it became manifest that no organization of these Terri- 
tories could take place at this session, the members of Congress 
from the slave States united in an address to their constituents, 
which was a clear resume from the pen of John C. Calhoun of 
what the South regarded as their constitutional rights. Thus 
ended the administration of James K. Polk, and with it the 
Tliirtieth Congress, 



123 A EEVIEW OF THE 



CHAPTER VIIL 

COMPROMISE MEASURES OF 1850. 

The 31st Congress assembled in December, 1849. Thaddens 
Stevens made liis first appearance at the beginning of this Con- 
gress as a Whig member of the ISTational House of Representa- 
tives, having been elected during the campaign which bore Gen. 
Taylor into the Presidential chair. Questions of the greatest 
importance for the harmony of the States and for the peace and 
prosperity of the Union, were awaiting the decision of the new 
Congress ; and the American people were looking to it with fond 
hopes for the adoption of measures that might avert the threat- 
ened dissolution of the Confederacy. The territorial contro- 
versy was that which, most of all, was arousing the passions of 
sectional hostility ; and which had now raged with intensity for 
a considerable period. Repeated efforts had already been made 
to solve the territorial problem between the ISTorth and the South, 
but all in vain, Tho 30th Congress had adjourned after fruitless 
attempts to terminate the increasing difficulties. 

California, Kew Mexico and Utah were awaiting the action of 
the Federal Legislature to clothe them with their republican 
regalia, which the exigencies of their sevei*al conditions required ; 
the first already having formed a State Constitution, was asking 
to be received as a member of the Union. The great question 
to be determined was the status that should be given to the new 
Territories as regards the institution of slavery. For the first 
time in the history of the Republic, a small body of Representa- 
tives from the ISTorth, took their seats in Congress upon the 
platform of opposition to the extension of African Slavery. 
Besides these, the large majority of northern Representatives, 
whether Whigs or Democrats, were likewise in sentiment averse 
to the spread of the institution over States and Territories, now 
deemed free. With these latter Mr. Stevens was identified. 
This state of opinion being well understood at the South, it is 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. 123 

but reasonable to suppose that a liigli degree of excitement would 
prevail in that section. 

"Never had any Congi-ess convened under so much excitement or 
under so great responsibility as did the one on which then devolved the 
disposition of this (slavery) question, under all the circumstances attend- 
ing it. The embarrassments of the period were increased from the fact 
that for the first time Southern Senators and Members were greatly 
divided as to the proper course to pursue, in view of the question with all 
its bearings. Some believed the time had coriie for a separation of the 
States, and that everything should be done Avith a view to effect that 
result. Others believed that the Union might still be preserved upon 
constitutional principles, and that the object was worth the most earnest 
and patriotic efforts. This class believed, however, that the time had 
come for a total abandonment of all old party associations, and that the 
united South should act in party organization with those of the North 
only, who would maintain the systeju as it was established by the Con- 
stitution."* 

The storm that had almost driven the Ship of State upon the 
shoals of disunion and civil convulsion was still ra»inf>-, and 
showed no signs of abating. It was the Ji^olus of abolitionism that 
had let fly the winds of strife, and all was in commotion. Many 
of the Notliern States were arrayed in bitter antagonism to their 
Southern sisters, and through their Legislatures assailed the 
institution of slavery in the most harsh and offensive terms. 
Yermont, Connecticut and other Eastern States had passed reso- 
lutions declaring that " the existence of slavery and the slave 
trade in the District of Columbia is a national disgrace, &c.;" 
and that their Senators and Ilej)resentatives in Congress " are 
hereby strictly instructed" to vote in every possible case for 
what is called the Wilmot proviso ; and " to vote ahvays, 
and in every state of the question, for the abolition of slavery in 
the District of Columbia, and against the admission of another 
slave holding State into the Federal Union." These resolutions 
and others of like character, were sent to the Governors of the 
different States and to their representatives in Congress. As 
giving the tendency of such resolutions and their transmission to 
the Southern States, the following extract from the National 
Intelligencer^ the leading organ of the Whig party is inserted : 

" In the substance of these resolutions, as in that of the Vermont reso- 
lutions on kindled subjects at an earlier period of the session, we find the 
fruitful cause of much of the excitement that within the last few months 

* Stephens' War between the States. Vol. 3, p. 1.77. 



12i A REVIEW OF THE 

manifested itself in the Legislatures of the Southern States ; the exempli- 
fication of a practice reprehensible in itself, inconsistent with friendly 
intercourse and justly offensive to those who are the objects of it. It is 
an idle pretence, that it is from any motive of courtesy that copies of 
such resolutions, as these are forwarded to the Governors of the States 
whose feelings, more than their interests, they ai-e calculated deeply to 
wound ; they can be so addressed w.th no other intention than to incense 
and irritate those whose known opinions and convictions they wilfully 
assail. The practice is at best an invidious and ungenerous one, and 
ought to be reformed altogether. The States are in all matters of opinion 
at least sovereign and independent of each other, and no one of them has 
a right to invade (so to speak) the domesticity of another. What does 
the reader suppose would be the consequence were one of the govern- 
ments of Europe to address siicli a missive to anotlier with respect to its 
peculiar institutions ? Suppose, for example, the Government of France 
were to send its compliments to the Government of Russia, with a mes- 
sage that the Emperor's holding of Serfs, or permitting them to be held 
in his dominion, was (in the language of the Vermont resolutions) a crime 
against humanity — a national disgrace, and demanding tiie abohtion of 
that feature of government. True or false, what answer could Russia 
be expected to make to such a proposition, but a declaration of war, or 
war without a declaration ? And in matters of internal government, 
what more right has one of our States to address such language to another 
in a matter of constitutional right, than one European Government would 
have to do it to another government on the same continent, and not more 
remote or distinct from it than the Government of Vermont is froin half 
of the States on this continent."* 

But another grievance much complained of by the South, was 
the disposition of the people of the North to interpose obstructions 
to the surrendering to their masters of fugitives from labor. This 
change of sentiment from what it was formerly, had been 
the result of the Anti-Slavery agitation that had almost severed 
the nation into two hostile parties. In the early history of the 
Republic, such a spirit of comity reigned between the North and 
South, that laws were enacted in near all of the Northern States 
which permitted citizens from the Southern States to sojourn in 
their midst with their slaves, and return home without loosing 
the right to their services. In the year 1826, Pennsylvania, at 
the reqviest of the people of Maryland, passed a liberal law to aid 
in the recovery of fugitive slaves, entitled, "An Act to giv^e 
effect to the Constitution of the United States in reclaiming fugi- 
tives from justice." Other Northern States acted in a disposition 
of like liberality. However, after Anti-Slavery ideas rose to 
power in the North, all this friendly legislation in behaK of 

*Editorial in National Intelligencer, February 23, 1850. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 125 

Soutliern nglits nnde-rvvent a change. In the case of Prigg vs. 
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, decided in 1S42, the Supreme 
Court of the United States affirmed the constitutionality of the 
fugitive slave act of 1793. This act of Congress had imposed 
upon the State magistrates the duty of arresting the fugitives 
from labor and returning them to their owners. This duty the 
Supreme Court in the above decision, declared not to be binding 
upon the State magistrates, and whether they would aid Southern 
masters in the recapture of their slaves, was left entirely to their 
own discretion. Under this decision of the highest tribunal, it 
became competent for the State Legislatures to prohibit their own 
functionaries from aiding in the execution of the Fugitive Slave 
Act. 

"Then commenced a furious agitation against the execution of this 
so called 'sinful and inhuman^ la.yv. State magistrates were prevailed 
upon by the Abolitionists, to refuse their agency in carrying it into effect. 
The Legislatilres of several States, in conformity with this decision, 
passed laws proliibiting these magistrates and other State officials from 
assisting in its execution. The use of the State Jails was denied for the 
safe keeping of the fugitives. Personal Liberty Bills were passed, inter* 
posing insurmountable obstacles to the recovery of slaves. Every means 
which ingenuity could devisg was put in operation to render the law a 
dead letter. Indeed, the excitement against it arose so high that the life 
and liberty of the master who pursued his fugitive slave into a free Sta.e 
were placed in imminent peril. For this he was often imprisoned and in 
some instances murdered. '* 

Even the conservative State of Pennsylvania, by her Act of 
March 3d, 1847, repealed her Sojourning Act of 1780, and 
also the Act of 1826, and therein forbade her judicial authori- 
ties to take cognizance of fugitive cases ; granted a habeas cor- 
pus remedy to any fugitive arrested, and denied the use of her 
jails for their coniinement. Thomas H. Benton thus speaks of 
the Pennsylvania Act of 1847 : 

'• Such had been the just and generous conduct of Pennsylvania towards 
the slave States, until up to the time of passing the harsh Act of 1847. 
Her legal right to pass that Act is admitted ; her magistrates were not 
bound to act under the Federal law ; her jails were not liable to be used 
for Federal purposes. The Sojourning Law of 1780 was her own, and she 
had a right to repeal it. But the whole Act of 1847 was the exercise of 
a mere right against the comity, which is due to States united under a 
common |,head, against moral and social duty, against high national 
policy, against the spirit, in which the constitution was made, against 
her own previous conduct for sixty years ; and injurious and irritating 

*Bu:hanau's Administration on the Eve of the Eebellion, p. 17. 



123 A REVIEW OF THE 

to the people of the slave States, and parts of it unconstitutional. The 
denial of the intervention of her judicial officers and the use of her 
prisons, though an inconvenience, was not insurmountable, and might 
be remedied by Congress ; the repeal of the Act of 1780 was the radical 
injury, and for which there was no remedy in the Federal legislation."* 

Testimony might be indefinitely amplified as regards the injus- 
tice done the southern people by northern legislation, and the 
imwillingness of the citizens of the IN^orth to acquiesce in the 
requirements of the Constitution, but unwilling to overburden 
with extracts, the following from Webster and Clay are alone 
added ; 

'But I will state these complaints, especially one complaint of 
the South, which has, in nay opinion, just foundation, and that is that 
tliere has been found at the North, among individuals and among the 
Legislatures of the North, a disinclmation to perform fully their constitu- 
tional duties in regard to the return of persons bound to service who 
have escaped into the free States. In that respect it . is my judgment 
that the South is right and the North is wrong. Every member of every 
Northern Legislature is bound by oath to support the Constitution of the 
United States, and this Article of the Constitution which says to these 
States they shall deliver up fugitives fi-om service, is as binding in honor 
and conscience as any other Article. No man fulfills his duty in any 
Legislature who sets himself to find excuses, evasions, and escapes 
from their constitutional duty. I have always thought that the Con- 
stitution addressed itself to the Legislatures of the States, or the States 
themselves. It says that those persons escaping to other free States shall 
be delivered up, and I confess I have always been of oi^inion that it was 
an injunction upon the States themselves. When it is said that a person 
escaping into another, and becoming therefore within the jurisdiction of 
that State shall be delivered up, it seems to me the import of the passage 
is, that the State itself, in obedience to the Constitution, shall cause him 
to be delivered up. That is my judgment, I have always entertained, 
and I entertain it now,''f 

" Mr. President. — I do think that that whole class of legislation, 
beginning in the Northern States, and extending to some of the South- 
ern States, by which obstructions and impediments have been thrown in 
the way of the recovery of fugitive slaves is unconstitutional, and has 
originated in a spirit which I trust will correct itself, when those States 
come calmly to consider the nature and extent of their federal obliga- 
tions, * * * * I know full well, and so does the honorable Senator 
from Ohio know, that it is at the utmost hazard and insecurity to life 
itself, that a Kentuckian can cross the river and go into the interior to 
take back his fugitive slave to the place from whence he fled. Recently 
an example occurred, even in the City of Cincinnati, in respect to one of 
our most respectable citizens. Not having visited Ohio at all, but Cov- 



*Benton's View, Vol. II, p. 775. 

I Webster's 7th of March Speech, 1850, in National Intelligencer, 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 127 

ington, on the opposite side of the river, a little slave of his escaped over 
to Cincinnatti. He pursued it ; he ^ound it in the house in which it was 
concealed, and it was rescued by the violence and force of a negi-o mob 
irom his possession, the police of the city standing by, and either unwill- 
ing or unable to afford the assistance which was requisite to enable him. 
to recover his property."* 

During the last days of Mr. Polk's administration, the veteran 
statesman of South Carolina, John C. Calhoun, became more 
than ever convinced that a crisis was approaching in the affairs 
of America, that would, unless checked, prostrate the South and 
her institutions, and with them the liberty of self-government. 
With this foreboding, he urged more thorough union amongst 
the Southern States, and in accordance with this advice, a large 
number of Senators and Representatives from that section united 
in an address to the people of the South, setting forth a state- 
ment of wrongs on the part of the North that demanded redress. 
This address was responded to by a convention of delegates of 
the people of Mississippi, chosen without distinction of party, 
which assembled in October, 1849, and recommended that " a 
convention of slave holding States should be held at Nashville, 
Tennessee, on the first Monday of June, 1850, to devise and 
adopt some mode of resistance to the aggression of the non- 
slave holding States.'^ Several Southern States appointed dele- 
gates to the Nashville Convention, but the movement was not 
popular with those who believed that a compromise of the pend- 
ing difficulties between the two sections was still possible. The 
convention, nevertheless, met in June, but was not largely 
attended. It issued an address enumerating a statement of 
southern complaints. 

Notwithstanding the grievances alleged by the South against 
the North were manifold, that which more than all else caused 
the present excitement, was induced by the opposition that ex- 
isted to permitting the extension of slaver}'- into the Territories 
or States hereafter to be admitted into the Union. The Northern 
Representatives had shown their unwillingness to either permit 
the application of the Missouri compromise to the new Territory, 
acquired from Mexico, or to acquiesce in any settlement which 
would permit slavery to enter it. This was claiming the lion's 
share, surely. If the principle of the Missouri compromise was 
to be only valid, as regards one section of the Union, the com- 

* Clay's 6th of March Speech, 1850, in National Intelligencer. 



128 A REVIEW OF THE 

pact liad become a nullity. And such was the veritable fact, as 
the votes in Congress for some years had shown. Whenever its 
application served the interests of anti-slavery proscription, the 
compromise was made use of; but when the reverse was the 
case, other means were then resorted to without scruple. 

Such was the attitude of affairs when the 31st Congress assem- 
bled. The first signihcant movement at the opening of this 
body that arrested the attention of the country, was made by 
those known as Southern Whigs. 

" They set the ball in motion by refusing to act further with 
the Whig organization, as it was then constituted, when the party 
met in caucus to nominate a Speaker of the House. A resolu- 
tion previously prepared was submitted to this meeting, which in 
substance was, that Congi'ess ought not to put any restriction 
upon any State institution, in the Territories, and ought not to 
abolish slavery, as it then existed, in the District of Columbia. 
Upon the refusal even to entertain this proposition, this class 
retired from the meeting, and would not act with the Whigs in 
the organization of the House." * Howell Cobb, of Georgia, 
was the Democratic candidate for the Speaker's Chair, and Kobert 
C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, was placed^n nomination for the 
same position by the Whigs. Fourteen independent Free Soilers, 
composed of Whigs and Democrats, refused to support either of 
these nominees. Thaddeus Stevens and many > other extreme 
anti-slavery men acted with the regular Whigs, and supported 
Mr. Winthrop for Speaker. But neither of the two great parties, 
as matters tlien stood, having a majority in the House, the elec- 
tion for Speaker was a long and tierce contest, and attracted the 
attention of the country as one that boded no future good. 
]^early a month was consumed before a Speaker was elected, an 
event then unprecedented in the history of American legislation. 
As parties were divided, no election would have been possible, 
under the rules, but for the passage of a resolution declaring 
that a bare plurality of votes cast for any one candidate, instead 
of a majority of the whole, should constitute an election. 

In the midst of the election for Speaker, Robert Toombs, one 
of the leaders of the Southern Whigs, made a speech in the 



Stephens' War. Vol. 2, p. 178. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 129 

midst of great excitement, in wliich. the following language 
occurs : 

"The difficulties in the way of the organization of the House are 
apparent and well understood here, and shou d be understood by the 
country. A great sectional question lies at the foundation of all these 
troubles. * * * * I do not, then, hesitate to avow before this House 
and the country, and in the presence of the living God, that if by your 
legislation you seek to drive us from the Territories of California and 
New Mexico, purchased by. the common blood and treasure of the whole 
people, and to abolish slavery In the District, thereby attempting to fix a 
national degradation upon half of the States of this Confederacy, I am 
for disvmion ; and if my physical courage be equal to the maintenance 
of my convictions of right and duty, I will devote all I am, and all I 
have on earth to its consummation." * 

That the sentiments of the Southern people at this period were 
equally as intense as those of their leaders in Congress, the follow- 
ing extract from a conservative Southern journal is evidence : 

" The two great political part'es of the country have ceased to exist in 
the southern States, so far as the present issue is concerned. United they 
will prepare, consult and combine for prompt and decisive action. With 
united voices (we are compelled to make a few exceptions, but they will, 
we hope, soon cease to be so) contend — with united voices they proclaim 
in the language of the Virginia resolutions, passed a few days since, 
tJie preservation of the Union if ice can, the preservation of our rights if 
we cannot. This is the temper of the South ; and this is the temper 
becoming the inheritors of rights acquired for freemen by the blood of 
freemen. Thus far shalt thou come and no further — or else the proud 
waves of northern aggression shall float the wreck of the Constitution. 

"We only love a Confederacj'- of equals ; for as equals we entered the 
Union, and we will remain in it upon no other condition. This is the 
deliberate conclusion of the Southern people. There is no hesitancy, no 
reservation, no escape. The Southern man should die who would accept 
for his State any other condition. "f 

The period was altogether alarming. The threatening clouds 
of disunion were gathering thick and fast along the Southern 
horizon ; and everything hetokened a collision of the elements 
as rapidly approaching. The dashing waves of abolition fury 
indicated that the storm was almost equally terriiicin the northern 
as in the southern sections. The Vessel of State was in danger 
of being borne upon the billows of the uniting tempest, and 
sunk beneath its blasts. The exigency called for one who was 
able to say to the troubled waters, " Peace, be still !" He came 
in the person of the Sage of Ashland, the great Pacificator of 

^-Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 1st Session, p. 27. 
fRichmond Ingidrer, Feb. 12th, 1850, 



I'SO A REVIEV/ OF THE 

his country, Henry Clay, of Kentucky, wlio on former occasions 
had guided the rocking bark of the Union, as between the roar- 
ings of Scylla and Charybdis, and moored her in the harbor of 
safety and peace. But now, silvered with the locks of honored 
wisdom, gained in a long and faithful public service, he returned 
to the United States Senate, to do the last service for his country 
in clutching her from the grasp of fratricidal convulsion, which 
the condition of her nature had been long preparing. Coming 
back thus in the far spent evening of a useful life, he was the 
admired of all the ]3^triotic lovers of the constitution, who be- 
lieved in the cardinal princijDles of republican government, that 
all just authority rests upon the consent of the governed. His 
watcliv/ord of safety for his countrymen was that which had laid 
the foundation, cemented, and for up^vards of sixty years pre- 
served the Itepublic. It was the watchword of freemen, compro- 
mise. All petty partisan malignity retired before the honored 
chief ; and his advise is anxiously sought as the Nestor of his 
age and country. His illustrious comj)e6rs of other days, Web- 
ster and Calhoun, were still in the Senate, anxious to aid in 
saving the nation from the dangers that were surrounding it. 
The above intellectual trio were surrounded by Cass, Benton, 
Berrien, King, Bell, Mangum, Douglas, and other gifted states- 
men, all glowing with zeal for the preservation of the Union 
from impending disaster and dissolution. 

On the 29th of January, 1850, Henry Clay introduced Jiis 
celebrated resolutions which were intended to embrace all the 
questions involved in the sectional controversy. It having been 
announced that Clay would address the Senate on this occasion, 
it was filled with, a dense mass of spectators, attracted to catch 
the words of wisdom and peace as they flowed from the golden 
mouthed orator of America. But thousands, anxious to licar the 
words of pacification that might calm the ocean of strife, were 
necessitated to retire in disappointment, being unable to penetrate 
within the hearing of the speaker. This, of all the scenes, that 
American history has yet unfolded, was most worthy the powers 
of a Raphael or Michael Angelo. It was America's greatest 
orator, prompted by the noblest motives of his nature, speaking 
before the most august and intellectual body of the world, in 
behalf of the grandest object of human conception, the preserva- 
tion of the most complete system of free government that the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. ISl 

wisdom of man had yet devised, and urging for that purposo 
those measures by which alone it could be perpetuated, concilia- 
tion and compromise. 

Mr, Clay's compromise proposed the admission of California 
under the Constitution she had adopted, although irregularly 
framed ; the adjustment of the boundary between Kew Mexico 
and Texas by negotiation with the latter ; the organization of 
Utah and New Mexico without any restriction as to slavery ; the 
enactment of an efficient fugitive slave law, and the abolition of 
the slave trade in the District of Columbia. This plan, as a 
whole, satisfied very few members, either in tlie House or Senate, 
The great majority from the North desired the exclusion of 
slavery from the Territories, and many of the same number Avere 
ecpially unwilling to permit the enactment of a fugitive slave 
law. With this latter division Mr, Stevens may be numbered. 
He, and those of intense anti-slavery notions, were likewise dis- 
inclined to accept alone the suppression of the slave trade in the 
District, but insisted upon its entire abolition. On the southern 
side, an overwhelming majority resisted the admission of Cali- 
fornia, because of the irregularity that had obtained in the adop- 
tion of the Constitution without an Act of Congress warrantino: 
it. Those styled Southern Whigs were ready to waive this 
irregularity, but demanded that in the organization of Utah and 
New Mexico, no exclusion of ^^very should be allowed, but that 
the people of all the States should be at liberty to emigrate 
thither with their property of every kind ; that the citizens of 
the said Territories should be permitted to form such State Con- 
stitutions as they chose ; and that they should be admitted into 
the Union, when making applications therefor, whether their 
Constitutions established slavery or otherwise. Thus was Con 
grGss divided upon these perplexing questions. 

On the 18th of February, a resolution was offered in the 
House by James D. Doty, of Wisconsin, which had for its object 
the admission of California, without any settlement of the other 
questions. A large majority of the House was in favor of its 
admission, but of this number the Southern AVhigs desired as a 
preliminary, the settlement of the territorial question. By a con- 
certed arrangement, these with others th-^varted action on Mr, 
Doty's resolution. by means of dilatory motions. 

In the Senate the intellectual giants, one after anotherj exerted 



133 A REVIEW OF THE 

themseh'cs in efforts to effect some form of compromise tliat 
would allay the sectional passions and the excitement then raging. 
The veteran statesman of South Carolina, too feeble to mingle 
in the strife as once he had done^ siibmitted his last views on the 
' crisis in a speech read for him on the 4th of March, in which he 
warned his countrymen of the danger that was menacing free 
government, lie was followed on the Ttli of March by Webster, 
who took decided grounds against Congressional restriction in 
the Territories, " This speech made a prof ounder sensation upon 
the public mind throughout the Union than any one delivered 
by him before. The friends of the Union under the Constitu- 
tion were strengthened in their hopes and inspired with renewed 
energies by its high and lofty sentiments." * On the ISth of 
April, a resolution submitted by Henry S. Foote, of Mississippi, 
an ardent friend of compromise, was passed in the Senate to raise 
a Select Committee of Thirteen, to whom the resolutioi^s of Mr. 
Clay were to be referred. The selection of this committee was 
made by ballot, and the Chairmanship of it was by almost unani 
mous consent awarded to Mr. Clay. On the 8th of the following 
month, the Chairman of this Committee reported to the Senate 
what was afterwards known as the " Omnilnis Bill^'' covering 
all the matters contained in his resolutions heretofore submitted. 
An amendment added by the majority (without Clay's appro- 
bation, as be stated) seemed to southern members generally, to 
imply a positive Congressional exclusion of the South from the 
Territories. 

On the 11th of June, Mr. Doty's bill for the admission of 
California, came up in the House, it having been referred to the 
Committee of the Whole on the 27th of the preceding February. 
Flis iirst resolution, instructing the Committee on Territories 
to report the bill, had miscarried. Mr. Green, of Missouri, 
now rose and moved as an amendment the recognition of the 
Missouri line through all the newly acquired territory. This was 
rejected by a large majority. Mr. Stanton, of Tennessee, on the 
13th of June, offered the following amendment : 

" Provided, However, that it shall be na objection to the admission 
into the Union of any State which may be hereafter formed out of the 
territory lying south of the parallel of latitude of 36°, 30', that the Con- 
stitution of said State may authorize African slavery therein," 

^Stephens' War, Vol. II, p. 211. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 133 

This proposition was rejected, 78 yeas to 89 nays, the vote 
being ahnost a sectional one. After this vote had been taken, 
Robert Toombs spoke as follows : 

" We do not oppose California o:i account of the anti-slavery clause in 
her Constitution. It was her right, and I am not prepared to say that 
she acted unwisely in its exercise ; that is her business ; but I stand upon 
the great principle that the South has the right to an equal participation 
in the Territories of the United States. I claim the right to enter them 
all with her property and securely to enjoy it. She will divide with you 
if you wish it ;* but the right to enter all, or divide, I shall never sur- 
render. In my judgment, this right involving as it does political equality, 
is worth a thousand such Unions as we have, even if they each were a 
thousand times more valuable than this. * * * Give us our just 
rights and we are ready as ever heretofore to stand by the Union, every 
part of it and every interest. Refuse it, and for one I will strike for 
independence, "f 

" This speech of Mr. Toombs delivered on the 15th of June, 
produced the greatest sensation," says Alexander II. Stephens, 
" in the House that I ever witnessed by any speech in that body 
during my congressional course. It created a perfect commotion. 
Several Southern Whigs who had not before sympathized with 
the class above alluded to,:j: now openly took sides with them. 
The House adjourned without coming to any further vote. The 
excitement in the House increased that in the Senate. It ex- 
tended to the city, and the subjects discussed in the House, 
become the topics of heated conversations on the streets and at 
the hotels. This was Saturday. Monday, Mr. Doty made another 
effort to get a resolution passed recpiiring the Committee of the 
Whole to report his bill. The effort failed."§ 

In the Senate the excitement was equally as intense as in the 
House. At this stage of the proceedings, Mr. Soule, of Louisiana, 
arose and offered the following amendment to the first section of 
Mr. Clay's compromise, which related to the Territorial Govern- 
ment of Utah : 



*By this remark Mr. Toombs expressed his willingness to abide by the 
Missouri compromise, provide i its principle would be applied to all tlij 
new Territories, but as just seen that had been rejected in the vote last 
taken in the House. His proposition must ever be considered as equit- 
able, and embodied that principle by which alone equals can at all nego- 
tiate. 

^Congressional Olobe, 31st Congress, 1st Session, p. 1216. 

XB.e means those Southern Wiiigs who refused to co-operate with the 
remaining Whigs in the election of a Speaker and otherwise, after the 
resolution i resented by them to the Whig caucus had been rejected. 

^gStephens' War, Vol. II, p. 217. 



134 A REVIEW OF THE 

" And when the said Territory, or any portion of the same, shall be ad- 
mitted as a State, it shall be received into the Union, with or without 
slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission." 

This amendment presented the issue sqnarely between the 
^orth and the South, andhecome thenceforth.^' the turning pointy 
upon whose adoption every thing depended, so far as concerned 
Mr. Clay's compromise."* Many a huart heat with anxiety as to 
the result of the vote upon this question in the Senate. Its re- 
jection in this august body of the nation, would have terminated 
all hoj)e of a satisfactory adjustment of the slavery question be- 
tween the two sections. The interest was greatly enhanced from 
the uncertainty and doubt which existed as to the attitude of 
several ISTorthern Senators. Prior to this time, the Wilmot pro- 
viso had received the support of several of these, who had given 
no indication as to how they would vote upon the questioii of 
leaving to the people of the Territories the determination of this 
question when framing their State Constitutions. Of this number 
was the great Senator from Massachusetts. Just before the ques- 
tion was put, and when anxiety had risen to its highest pitch, 
this renowned statesman of -New England arose to address the 
Senate. The momentuous occasion aroused the dormant virtues 
of the powerful defender of the Eepublic, and forgetful of self 
or sectional interests, he j? reclaimed himself the advocate of tlie 
rights of all under the Constitution. The amendment he de- 
clared should receive his support. He concluded his masterly 
effort in the following language : 

" Sir, my object is peace — my object is reconciliation. Mj purpose is 
not to make a case for the Noi'th, or to make a case for the South. My 
object is not to continue useless and irritating controversies. I am 
against agitators, Noi'th and South ; I am against local ideas, North or 
South, and against all narrow and local contests. I am an American 
and I know no locality in America. That is my country. My heart, my 
sentiments, my judgment, demand of me that I should pursue such a 
course as shall promote the good, the harmony, and the union of the 
whole country. This I shall do, God willing, to the end of the chapter." 

" Daniel Webster resumed his seat," says the reporter, " amidst 
the general applause of the gallery." The anxiety seemed im- 
mediately to subside. The great statesman of the ISTorth had 
thrown his weight in the scale of the amendment. " The friends 
of the measure felt that it was safe. The vote was taken — the 



^Stephens' War, Vol. IT, p. 318. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 135 

amendment was adopted. The result was soon communicated 
from the galleries, and finding its way through every passage 
and outlet to the rotunda, was received with exultation by the 
crowd there ; and in less than five minutes, perhaps, the electric 
wires were trembling with the gladsome news to the remotest 
parts of the country. It was well calculated to make a nation 
leap with joy, as it did, because it was the first decisive step 
taken towards the establishment of that great principle upon 
which this territorial question was disposed of, adjusted and set- 
tled in 1850."* 

Mr. Clay's bill continued the subject of discussion in the Sen- 
ate until the 31st of July, when it was so mutilated and altered 
as to leave nothing but that portion providing for a government 
for the Territory of Utah, with the Soule amendment incorpor- 
ated in it, as stated. In this shape it passed the Senate and was 
then sent to the House. In this way. Clay's " Omnibus Bill" 
went to pieces. The Senate, however, immediately took up the 
parts, embodied them in separate bills, which, after being passed, 
were transmitted to the House for concurrence. 

But the anti-compromise party of the Thirty-first Congress, 
was far from being one of insignificance, either numerically or 
intellectually. Being the result of the long anti-slavery agitation, 
it comprised in its ranks men of large scholastic attainment, and 
such as were imbued with pure humanitarian impulses, but whose 
minds partaking too largely of the reformatory bent, are never 
safe counsellors in legislative capacities. For the establishment 
and perpetuation of govei-nment, men of logical minds and 
^philosophical comprehensions are needed, rather than those de- 
voted to assumed conceptions which no rational considerations 
could induce them to modify or abandon. The legislator and 
the reformer f are widely variant characters, whose spheres of 

^Stephens' War, Vol II, pn, 219 and 220. 

f The reformer is the enthusiastic advocate of moral, social or religious 
change as he conceives ; for the alteration he aims to effect may bo a dire 
calamity to mankind. He is the honest innovater upon the past w^ho is 
guided by his feelings more than by his judgment. His asjDirations are 
too intense to allow reason to enter, and hence he gives way to the most 
extravagant excesses that prostrate law and social order. Peter Munzer 
and John of Lej^den, were quite as sincere reformers as Martin Luther 
and John Calvin ; and so as social reformers, Robespierre, Dauton and 
Mirabeau were as sincere and enthusiastic champions of liuman equality 
as the world ever saw. But intolerance, proscription and zealous hate 
more frequently accompany the character of the reformer than that 
Pauline charity which e\ en nature instills. That such should be the case 



133 . A REVIEW OF THE 

duty dare never be intermingled, save at the risk of constant 
t irmoil and governmental disquietude. Tlie sentiments of this 
reformatory party on the subject of compromise between the 
North and South were expressed in the following extract of a 
speech made by Thaddeus Stevens on May 20th, 1850 : 

" It is proper, then, to inquire whether the thing (slavery) sought to be 
forced upon the TeiTitories, at the risk of treason and rebellion, be a 
good or an evil. I think it is a great evil which ought to be interdicted ; 
and that we should oppose it as statesmen, as philanthiopists, and as 
moralists, notwithstanding the extraordinary iDosition taken by the gen- 
tleman from Alabama (Mr. Hilliard) to the contrary, 

" While I thus announce my unchangeable hostility to slavery, in 
every form and in every place, I also avow my determination to stand 
by all the compromises of the Constitution and to carry them into faith- 
ful effect. Some of these compromises I greatly dislike ; and were they 
now open for consideration, they should never receive my assent.* But 
I find thein in a Corstitution formed in difficult times, and I would not 
disturb them. 

" By those compromises, Congress has no power over slavery in the 
States. I greatly regret that it is so ; for if it were within our legitimate 
control, I would go regardless of all threats, for some just, safe and cer- 
tain means for its final extinction. But I know of no one who claims 
the I'ight, or desires to touch it within the States. But when we come to 
form governments for Territories acquired long since the formation of 
the Constitution and to admit new States, whose only claim for admis- 
sion depends on the will of Congress, we are bound to so discharge that 

arises from the nature of his character; for as he conceives hi nself a'ld 
those agreeing in opinion with him, as the only divinely illumine I beings 
on earth, he d.esires that all others shall either be converted to liis views 
or exterminated, so as to prevent their errors from proving the destruc- 
tion of themselves and others. The fires of Smithfieid, the Inquisiti rial 
flames of Spain and the Italian peninsula, and the blazes in whicu 
Servetus expired, were all kindled by the excessive zeal of the reforma- 
tory sjiirit. 

*As regards the principle of compromise, we think Mr. Stevens was 
radically wrong, assu uing that he was a believer in the priixiples of 
republican government. No general government for the States could 
ever have been formed in America but for this principle. It lies at the 
basis of all democratic government, and so soon as it is repudiated the 
monarchical principle takes its place. In accordance with this principle, 
the Confederated American Republic was formed and perpetuated until 
the breaking out of the war between the Northern and Southern States. 
As evidence of what is thus affirmed as regards the i^rinciple of coni- 
I)romise, the Supreme Court in the case of Pr g^ vs. the Commonwealth, 
speaking of the Fugitive Slave Clause in the Constitution, say : "His- 
torically, it is well known that the object of this clause (the above clause 
of the Constitution) wa» to secure for the citizens of the slaveholding 
States, the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves as prop- 
erty, in every State of the Union into which they might escape from the 
Stiite where they were held in servitude. The full recognition of tliis 
right and title was indispensable to the security of this species of property 
in all the slaveholding Sfates ; and indeed was so vital to the preserva- 
tion of their domestic institutions, that it cannot be doubted that it con- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 187 

duty as shall best contribute to the prosperity, the power, the permanency 
and the glory of this nation."* 

In the House the great sectional contest was fought on the 
Soule amendment offered by Mr. Boyd, of Kentucky, to the 
bill establisliing the Territory of IS'ew Mexico. During this con- 
test, which lasted from the 2Sth of August until the 6th of 
Sei3tember, the discussions were of the most animated character, 
and partisan tactics were made use of witli the greatest skill and 
adroitness. In this fierce strife of the sections, the debates seemed 
to open on every succeeding day with renewed intensity, and 
in the war of sentiments destiny seemed as but arousing the 
combatants, and preparing them for the trials that awaited them 
in the future. In this and similar encounters, unless the verdict 
of universal history be reversed, the American Republic received 
her first fatal stabs ; and it is for time to determine whether slie 
can outlive those already received, and those which, from the 
nature of her being, the enemies of her own household in future 
as in past collisions, will have it in their power to inflict. On 
the last direct vote, on the Boyd amendment, the bill passed by 
108 ayes to 98 nays. The anti-restrictionists had won the day at 
last. Tlie hall was in a general uproar. This was the kernel of 
the compromise of 1850. The other associated measures de- 
pended upon this one, and with it formed the compact of settle- 
ment between the ISTorth and South. After the passage of this 
first bill, the others came up in order, and were likewise passed. 
The fugitive slave bill, like that embracing the Territorial com- 
promise, met with a stubborn resistance from the Northern Anti- 
Slavery men with whom Mr. Stevens acted. 

The compromise measures were heartily accepted by the masses 
North and South, as a settlement of the difliculties between the 
two sections. It had received the support of the distinguished 
leaders of the Whig and Democratic parties ; and the people are 
ever ready to abide by the words of those possessing their confi- 
dence. Although the Anti-Slavery men in the North, and the . 
Southern extremists had opposed the compromise, this was 

stituted a fundamental article, without which the Union could not have 
been formed. Its true design was to guard against the doctrines and 
principles prevalent in tlie non-slaveholding States, by preventing them 
from intermeddling with, or obstructing or abolishing the rights of own- 
ers of slaves." 
*Appendix to Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, Part 1st, p. 1-^1. 



1C8 A REVIEW OF THE 

not considered at tlie time as alarming. It was clear to all 
observing men, however, that the dissolution of tlie Whig party 
WiJS near at hand, as it was within the ranks of this organization 
that most of the Free Soil and Abolition element of the country 
found itself. But it was also evident that the Democratic party 
of the North was not, by any means free from the same element, 
and the Southern leaders began to consider the propriety of a re- 
organization of parties. It was this which induced Henry Clay, 
Howell Cobb, and many other Southern leaders, at the close of 
the compromise session, to unite in a manifesto to the country 
declaring that they in future would support no man for office 
e'thei' State or Federal, Avho would not agree to stand by and 
support the principles established by these measures. But in the 
Southern States efforts were made to succeed under party ban- 
ners opposed to the compromise, all of which, however, proved 
f lilures ; and the same was true where it was tried in the North. 

Mr. Stevens was nominated for Congress in the year 1850, 
while the compromise measures were yet pending, and his party 
having an immense majoiity in Lancaster County, he was elected. 
But his action in Congress as regarded the compromise arrayed 
in 1852 a powerful opposition against him in Lancaster County, 
and he failed to receive the nomination of the party in that year. 
Isaac E. Iliester, a young and rising lawyer, was selected as the 
Congressional standard-bearer in his stead. No other opposition 
was urged against his nomination, except that of his having op- 
posed the compromise of 1850. His intellectual superiority over 
all other aspirants in the county Vv^as generally conceded ; but he 
was then regarded by the nu^jority of his party (as he ever was by 
the Democrats) as partaking too much of the character of the 
agitator, one dangerous to the perpetuitj- of free institutions. 

The great unanimity with which the Northern Whigs in Con- 
gress had opposed the compromise, made it a matter of uncer- 
tainty, whether the party would be able to unite as a National 
o.-ganization in the Presidential election of 1852. The AYhigsin 
some sections of the North, fought the compromise with straight- 
f )rward boldness, and arrayed themselves under banners inscribed 
Avith It; condemnation. In 1851, the Whig State Convention of 
Ohio passed resolutions repudiating the compromise as a measure 
of their party, and nominated Samuel F. Yinton for Governor, 
who, while in Congress, had opposed it. The New York State 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 139 

Convention of the Whig party, shortly after Millard Fillmore 
assumed the Presidential chair, refused to endorse his policy, be- 
cause he had sanctioned the Fugitive Slave Law. For the pur- 
pose, therefore, of testing Northern sentiment on the Slavery 
question, before the assembling of the party conventions for the 
nomination of candidates for the Presidency, Mr. Jackson, of 
Georgia, on the 5th of April, 1852, submitted in the National 
House of Representatives the following resolution : 

'^Resolved, That we recognize the binding efRcacy of the compromises 
of the Constitution, and believe it to be the intention of tAie people gen- 
erally, as we freely declare it to be ours, individually, to abide by such, 
and to sustain the laws necessary to carry them out — tlie provisions for 
the delivery of fugitive slaves, and the act of the last Congress, for that 
purpose included ; and that we deprecate all further agitation of questions 
growing out of that provision of the questions embraced in the acts of 
the last Congress, known as the compromise, and of questions generally 
connected with the institution of slavery, as unnecessary, useless and 
dangerous," 

This resolution was opposed by all the JSTorthern Whigs in the 
House of Eepresentatives except seven. The Whig Congress- 
ional caucus met on the 20th of April, 1852, in the Senate 
Chamber, to consider matters of political interest to the Whig 
party, at which Mr. Marshall, of Kentucky, submitted the fol- 
lowing resolution : 

" That they regard the series of Acts known as the Compromise Meas- 
ures, as forming in their mutual dependence and connection, a system of 
Compromise, the most concUiatory and the best for the whole country, 
that could be obtained from conflicting sectional interests and opinions ; 
and then fore they ought to be observed and carried into faithful execu- 
tion, as a final settlement in principle and substance of the dangerous 
and exciting subjects which they embrace." 

This resolution was niled to be out of oi-der, and the decision 
of the Chair was sustained by a vote of 46 to 21. The members 
who voted to sustain the decision of the Chair were from the 
North, and in principle opposed to the compromise. Thereupon 
a number of Whigs from the Southern States seceded from the 
care lis and published an address to the party throughout the 
United States. 

The Whig National Convention assembled at Baltimore June 
16th, 1852, and exhibited a division in its ranks without precedent 
in party annals. The Northern Whigs, who had opposed the 
passage of the compromise measures in Congress, and had never 



no A REVIEW OF THE 

since acquiesced in tlieir justice, (especially the fugitive slave 
law) presented as their candidate for the Presidency General 
Winfield Scott, who was believed to be opposed to the institution 
of Southern slavery ; and on the other hand, the Southern Whigs 
were favorable to the nomination of Fillmore, who had approved 
the compromise measures of 1850. A few delegates from the 
Northern States were desirous that Daniel Webster should be 
made the party nominee. The Southern and the Northern anti- 
slavery winij; of the party held their respective conclaves in a 
spirit of the most bitter hostility towards each other. Section- 
alism had severed the Whig party. All that remained of it was 
the form ; and yet it was hoped that a Presidential campaign 
might be made with a popular nominee, and that thus the lifeless 
trunk might be galvanized into a brief vitality. A platform cf 
principles for the party had been agreed upon by the Southern 
delegates and the Northern friends of Webster prior to the meet- 
ing of the convention, which endorsed the compromise of 1850 
as a measure of Whig policy. It was clearly understood, that 
unles5 the party in convention affirmed this measure as a final 
settlement between the North and South, the Southern delegates 
would take no part in the proceedings. The Southern delegates, 
with the Webster wing from the North, formed a majority of 
the convention, and the compromise was endorsed by 164 ayes to 
117 nayes. The resolution affirming the measure, as a principle 
of the party, was in these words : 

" The series of acts of the Thirty -first Coii^ress, commonly known as 
the Compromise, or the adjustment, (the act for the recoverv of fugitives 
from labor included) are received and acquiesced in by the Wliig party of 
the United States as a final settlement in principle and substance of the 
dangerous and exciting questions which they embrace ; and so far as 
these acts are concerned, we will maintain them and insist upon their 
strict enforcement until time and experience shall demonstrate the 
necessity of further legislation to guard against the evasion of the laws 
on the one hand, and the abuse of their power on the other ; not impair- 
ing their present efficiency to carry out the requirements of the Consti- 
tution ; and we deprecate all further agitation of the questions thus 
settled as dangerous to our peace ; and we will discountenance all efforts 
to continue or renew such agitation whenever, wherever, or however 
made ; and we will maintain this settlement as essential to the nationality 
of the Whig party and the integrity of the Union." 

General Winheld Scott and William A. Graham were nomi- 
nated for President and Vice-president of the United States. ' 

After the enactment of the compromise, i i 1850, the Demo- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 141 

cratic party manifested its approval of this series of measures, 
and its determination to abide by the same. In the year 1851, 
the convention of this party for the State of Pennnsylvania, met 
at Reading and adopted resohitious condemning the Act of 1817, 
passed by the State Legishiture, which denied the use of her 
jails for the detention of fugitive slaves, and also approving of 
the compromise measures of 1850, The State Convention of 
Ohio nominated Reuben Wood for Governor in 1851, and after 
his election, in his inaugural address, speaking of the compromise^ 
he said : 

" Under all the circumstances which surround lis, it (the compromise) 
should remain undisturbed, and this fruitful source of agitation and 
excitement be forever closed," 

The Democratic National Convention assembled on the 1st of 
June, 1852, and adopted a platform of principles which was 
strictly national, and reaffirmed its ancient position on the slavery 
question. As regards the compromise of 1850, the convention 
declared its 23urpose to " adhere to a faithful execution of the 
acts known as the compromise measures, settled by the last Con- 
gress — the act for reclaiming fugitives from service or labor 
included ; which act, being designed to carry out an express pro- 
vision of the Constitution, cannot with iidelity thereto be repealed 
or so changed as to impair its efficiency." " The Democratic 
party will resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of 
it, the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or 
color the attempt may be made," The nominees of this conven- 
tion were Gen. Franklin Pierce and William R, King, of Ala- 
bama. 

The Free Soil party, which had supported Tan Buren and 
Adams in 1818, assembled again in 1852, and nominated for 
President John P. Hale, of E'ew Hampshire, and for Vice- 
President George W. Julian, of Indiana. It was then, as now, 
styled the " Free Soil Democracy," The platform of this party 
is quite elaborate in words, and yet it narrows itself down sub- 
stantially to a denunciation of the institution of slavery. It 
declares slavery a sin against God and man ; pronounces the Fu- 
gitive Slave Law repugnant to the Constitution of the Unt'd 
States ; advocates the policy of recognizing the Independence of 
Hayti, and says that " The Free Democratic party is not organ- 
i'ied to aid either the Whig or Democratic wing of the great 



142 A REVIEW OF THE 

slave-compromlsG party of the nation, but to defeat tliem botli/' 
This party received the support of the radical abolitionists of tlie 
^Northern States. The number of votes polled by this party was 
not so large in 1852 as it polled in 1848. 

The Democratic party obtained a triumphant victory in the 
campaign of 1852, utterly routing their Whig opponents in every 
State of the Union, save four. After his inauguration, Franklin 
Pierce as President of the United States, took occasion in his 
first annual message to the 33d Congress to announce his deter- 
mination to conform to the pledges given in his behalf by those 
who had elected him to the Presidency. He said : 

"It is no part of my purpose to give prominence to any subject which 
may be properly regarded as set at rest by the deliberate judgment of 
the people, but whilst the present is bright with promise, and the future 
full of demand and inducement for the exercise of active intelligence, 
the past can never be without useful lessons of admonition and instruc- 
tion. If its dangers serve not as beacons, they will evidently fail to ful- 
fill the objects of a wise design. When the grave shall have closed over 
all who are now endeavoring to meet the obligations of duty, the year 
1850 will be recurred to as a period fdled with anxious apiDrehension. A 
successful war had just terminated. Peace brought with it a vast aug- 
mentation of territory. Disturbing questions arose, bearing upon the 
domestic institutions of one portion of the Confederacy, and involving 
the constitutional rights of the States. But, notwithstanding differences 
of opinion and sentiment which then existed in relation to the details of 
specific divisions, the acquiescence of distinguished citizens, whose 
devotion can never be doubted, had given renewed vigor to our institu- 
tions and restored a sense of repose and security to the public mind 
throughout the Confederacy. That this respose is to suffer no shock 
during my official term if I have the power to avert it, those who placed 
me here may be assurrcd." 

The career of the Whig party was now terminated. The 
Presidential canvass of 1852 was the closing contest in which it 
participated. Clay and Webster, its renowned leaders, had de- 
scended to their graves and their party speedily followed them. 
The last cohesive elements that had still united it, dissolved in 
the demise of these patriotic and intellectual men, the noblest 
productions of the American Republic. With these great states- 
men, broad, liberal, National ideas were cherished ; but with thos3 
who rose to take their places, sectional views were fostered as of 
paramount importance to confederated integrity. Only an op- 
portunity was now wanting to develop, to evident observation, 
the existing schism that had rent the Whig party into sectional 
extremes. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 143 



CHAPTER IX. 

RESISTANCE TO THE FUGITIVE SLAVE hAVT. CHRISTIANA MOT, &C. 

The disinclination of the Northern people to surrender fugi- 
tive slaves to their masters, when they had made their escape 
amongst them, originated in that humanitarian feeling which 
recognizes all men as equals and brethren of the same great 
family. The equality of mankind, from its popular announce- 
ment in the Declaration of Independence and its constant repeti- 
tion in the newspaper press and elsewhere, had become in the 
estimation of most Americans an accepted opinion, even amongst 
the intelligent classes ; and one that reason has difiiculty to 
contradict. Its repetition and belief was agreeable to the feel- 
ings of the masses, and proved in the possession of demagogues, 
an admirable charm by which to seduce the unreflecting into the 
support of their selfish interests and schemes. In its earliest 
promulgation, it was thrown out simply as a declaration that 
seemed to comport with Democratic theories, rather than as 
expressing existing truth. In the estimation of the thinhing 
world, it could never have imported what it expressed ; for 
inequality is clearly stamped uj)on the whole face of creation. 
The proposition that '' all men are born equal," is a sheer 
absurdity. " All men are born unequal. Their education is un- 
equal. Their associations are unequal. Their opportunities are 
unequal. And their freedom is as unequal as their equality. 
The poor are compelled to serve the rich, and the rich are com- 
pelled to serve the poor by paying for their services. The politi- 
cal party is compelled to serve the leaders, and the leaders are 
compelled to scheme and toil in order to serve the party. The 
multitude are dependent upon the few who are endowed with 
talents to govern. And the few are dependent on the multitude 
for the power, without which all government is impossible. 
From the top to the bottom of the social fabric the whole is thus 
seen to be inequality and mutual dependence. And hence, all 



144 A REVIEW OF THE 

inankincl, from tlie higlitest to the lowest are subject to that 
imperative necessity, the slavery of circumstances," * 

But even truth itself, is for a time impotent to resist the se- 
ductive insinuations of the feelings, as the demonstrations of history 
and experience abundantly prove. The opposition to the sur- 
render of Southern fugitives to their masters, which for years 
had been increasing in intensity in the ISTorth, was germinated 
amongst the masses in both social and ecclesiastical views. In the 
latter aspect the position taken by the I*Torthern Methodist, Bap- 
tist and other protestant churches, had largely contributed to 
increase in the minds of innocent and pious Christians their 
dislike of Southern slavery and their detestation to the rendition 
of human chattels. Overlooking the fact that slavery opposition 
had taken its rise in the schools of free thought, and in the ra- 
tionalistic churches of England and America, the zealous of the 
othel' sects, marched blindly to the advocacy of principles tlu't 
have done more to subvert biblical Christianity and ecclesiastical 
truth, than any other that could have been adopted. The daring 
assumption of infidel teaching, that law and social order must 
yield to private opinion as the most holy and sacred conservator 
of truth, was loudly re-echoed by the ISTorthern churches ; and 
the doctrines avowed with unblushing eft" entry, that no enactment 
of Congress could impose it as a duty, to aid the Southern master 
in the reclamation of his escaped property. The angel's mandate 
to Ilagar, and St. Panl's conduct towards Onesimus, together with 
the action of the Christian church in all anterior ages, were entirely 
forgotten. The modern clmrches had so far exchanged the prin- 
ciples of the bible for the infidel moral codes of latter ages ; and 
blindly j^ermitted their new teachers to exercise the chief influ- 
ence in their synagogues, and consecrate those lilling the highest 
seats in the nation. 

In the case of those entertaining views as thus stated, it would 
be resonable to suppose that the fugitive slave law could impart 
no obligation to yield acquiescence in its provisions. Iso sooner 
was it, therefore, enacted in 1850, as part of the great compro- 
mise between the States of the Union, than meetings were held 
in various sections, and resolutions adopted by the rationalistic 
high priests of the Northern sanctuaries and their neophite 
church followers, denouncing the act as wicked and inhuman. 

♦Hopkins' Bible View of Slavery, p. 23 and 34. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 113 

Of tlie' rationalistic American clmrches, none had sliown so 
early and determined an opposition to the institution of slavery 
as the Quakers ; and this, because of the character of its mem- 
bership and remarkable freedom from all faith domination. In 
its organization, as an ecclesiastical body, it had divested itself of 
every conceivable appendage of biblical belief, for which reason 
was unable to interpose a solution ; and therefore it was not 
diilicult for it, in addition to alt this, to accept as Christian teach- 
ing, what had been conceived in the schools of French and 
British free thought. The Quakers, as a people, originally be- 
longed, in the main, to the humble and unpretentious classes : 
and a simplicity marked their conduct and character, even to the 
eschewing of the higher grades of intellectual culture and ad- 
vanced education. A plain, unadorned and unobtrusive manner 
pervaded the every-day life of Quaker society, which seemed to 
present a cognate affinity with the ascetic orders of history. It 
is not strange, therefore, that that church should be the first to 
denounce slavery as unchristian, which was able to set aside all 
the historical verity of the world's existence ; and conceive that 
society, with its attained development could subsist without the 
resistant power ; and that national life could endure without that 
highest coercive of humanity, legalized warfare. 

" Upon the organization of the anti-slavery societies through- 
out the IS'orthern States, it was to be expected that the Quakers 
should figure prominently in these efforts to abolish slavery. All 
that the Quakers and the other anti-slavery organizations could 
effect was to keep up an agitation of the slavery question, and 
thus endeavor to educate the public conscience up to their prin- 
ciples. In this, they were to a very great degree successful. 
Their opinions entered others of the American churches, and 
divisions of the same followed, marked by the Mason and Dixon 
boundary. The American Union, in the eyes of many of the 
leading statesmen of the nation, was again rocking in the throes 
of disunion or civil convulsion ; and another compromise, headed 
by Clay and Webster, was sanctioned by the National Congress 
in 1850, which made it the duty of the ]S[orthern States to sur- 
render fugitive slaves to their masters, where the proper legal 
demand was made for them. Against the compromise ru" 1850, 
and especially against the fugitive slave law, the Noi-tliui n con- 
science at length fully revolted. Slavery being regarded as a sin 



146 A REVIEW OF THE 

bj a large portion of the intelligent citizens of the iN'orth ; that 
they should be compelled to render aid in capturing the fleeing 
fugitive from labor, was altogether incompatible with their sense 
of duty. In their view they would rather bear the penalty of 
the law as aid in its execution, Ko law could justly, as they 
believed, compel them to violate conscience." 

" In no section of the whole Korth was there a more deter- 
mined feeling of opposition or disinclination to the execution of 
the fugitive slave law than in the eastern part of Lancaster 
County, where the citizens were mostly either Quakers or their 
descendants. For years fugitive slaves had found among 
the people of Sadsburg and Salisbury townships kind treatment, 
and quite a colony of them had been congregated and settled in 
the vicinity of Christiana. It was natural to suppose that the 
fleeing fugitive would direct his steps to a retreat amongst the 
friends of his liberty, rather than amongst those who were ready 
to surrender him for pelf, or out of hatred to his race." * 

Some of the slaves of Edward Gorsuch, a highly respectable 
citizen of Maryland, had made their escape into the eastern part 
of Lancaster County, and were living amongst others of their 
race in that section. Mr. Gorsuch, having ascertained the locality 
of his slaves, set out for Pennsylvania in search of the absconded 
property. He called upon and made the requisite affidavits 
before Edwaad D. Ingrahara, Commissioner of the United States, 
appointed under the fugitive slave law of 1850. That officer 
issued four warrants dated September 9th, 1851, directed to 
Henry H. Kline, as Deputy Marshall, by virtue of which he was 
authorized to arrest Joshua Hammond, George Hammond, Nelson 
Ford and ]S"oah Iju.ley, four fugitive slaves, believed to be living 
in Lancaster County. The facts of the issuing of the writs be- 
came known to a colored tavern keeper in Philadelphia by the 
name of Samuel Williams, who with another colored man pre- 
ceded the official party to the neighborhood where the slaves 
resided, and where the arrests were to have been made, and gave 
notice to the negroes of the vicinage that officers would shortly 
visit tliem for tin purpose of capture. Word was at once circu- 
lated amongst the negroes of the colony, and such white persons 
as were known to sympathize with them, and it was resolved that 



^Harris' Biographical History of Lancaster County, pp. 148 and 149. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 147 

united resistance sliould be made to all attempts to recaptu-re the 
fugitive slaves. The negroes were emboldened to this resolution 
bj the known views of a large number of the influential citi- 
zens of the neighborhood, who in their hearing liad frequently- 
expressed their disapprobation of slavery and the fugitive slave 
law. Meetings of the citizens in that locality even had been 
held after the enactment of that law, condemning it as wicked 
and unjust ; and that the Northern people owed no obligation to 
aid in its execution. Besides, there is little doubt but the negroes 
had the quiet approbation of some of their influential neighbors, 
by whom, perhaps, in all probability, the flrst suggestion of 
resistance to capture may have been made. 

As soon as the warrants for the arrest of the fugitives were 
placed in the hands of Deputy Marshal Kline, arrangements 
were made for executing the writs as speedily as possible, Edward 
Gorsuch was accompanied by Dickinson, his son, Dr. Thomas 
Pearce, a nephew, and Joshua Gorsuch ; besides two neighbors, 
who had come to assist in making capture of the fugitives. 
Deputy Marshal Kline and the Maryland capturing party set out 
for Lancaster County, taking different modes of conveyance, and 
arrived at Christiana early on the morning of September 11th. 
Having secured the service of one acquainted with the locality, 
they started on hunt of the fugitives ; and when they had neared 
a tavern, kept by^ a negro named Parker, about two miles from 
Christiana, they espied one of the slaves coming down the lane 
from Parker's houss'. As soon as the slave saw them, he returned 
and fled to Mie house, pursued by the party y but he succeeded in 
eluding their grasp. He made his way up stairs, and the party 
in search of him immediately surrounded the house so as to pre- 
vent escape. 

But it was soon apparent that resistance to the execution of 
the writs was determined upon^ for as the party was approaching 
the house, a horn was distinctly heard, which proved to be a sig- 
nal for the collecting of their friends, Edward Gorsuch, the 
o^vner, and the Deputy Marshal, now entered the house and, dis- 
covering that several blacks were up stairs, they demanded of 
them that they surrender, w^hieh they promptly refused and 
began loading their guns, showing the utmost determination of 
resistance. Mr. Gorsuch, addressing his slave by name, said : 
" Come down, Nelson, I know your voice ; I know you," and 



148 A REVIEW OF THE 

after a pause added : " If you come down and go home witli me, 
without any trouble, we will overlook the past." One of the 
negroes answered, " If you take one of us you must do so over 
our dead bodies !" The Marshal now read his warrant aloud, 
and assurred the negroes that he was clothed with the legal 
authority to make the arrest. Mr. Gorsueh now called upon the 
Deputy Marshal to ascend the stairs and arrest the fugitive ; and 
in attempting to do so he was struck at with a shai-p instrmiient 
and compelled to desist. Mr, Gorsueh, in the meantime, stepped 
outside and called to his slave and endeavored to persuade him 
to surrender himself peaceably to his authority ; and while doing 
so was shot at by one of the negroes from a window, but the 
shot failed to take effect. The Marshal again read his warrant, 
and advised the negroes of the peril of resisting the authority of 
the Government ; and added, that if it became necessary, he 
would call upon additional assistance to aid him in making the 
arrest. He told Parker, the keeper of the house, that he would 
hold him responsible untess he surrendered the negroes, as the 
law required, Parker replied that he was a Pennsylvanian, and 
did not care for the law, but asked for a few moments for refiee- 
tion, that they might determine what course to pursue. 

During this period, two white men named Castner Hanway 
and Elijah Lewis, the former on horseback and the latter on 
foot, suddenly appeared upon the ground. This was seen to have 
the effect of inspiring enthusiasm into the negroes in the house, 
who immediately set up a cheering. Whether any previous secret 
understanding had existed between these whites and the negroes, 
may perhaps never be fully ascertained ; but the cheering raised 
upon their appearance had a very suspicious aspect. Edward Gor- 
sueh requested the Marshal to ask these white men to assist in 
making the arrest. He approached the one on horseback, Han- 
way, and politely addressed him, without receiving any recogni- 
tion of his salutation. He then asked him if he belonged to 
that neighborhood, and received as the replj^, " it is none of your 
business." He next inquired of him his name, and was told, 
'' you will have to find it out." The Marshal next informed him 
! who he was, and of his authority for making the arrest, at the 
same time handing him his w^arrant. Hanway read the warrant, and 
returaed it to the ofhcer. He also handed it to Lewis, the other 
white man, who read it in like manner, and afterwards returned 



• POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 149 

it. The Marshal now called upon them, by virtue of his 
authority, to assist him in executing his writ. Ilanway replied, 
that " he would have nothing to do with it ; he would not assist 
at all ; the negroes had a right to defend themselves.'" By this 
time a considerable number of negroes had made their appearance 
near the lane armed with double-barrelled guns, pistols, corn- 
cutters, scythes and clubs. The organization had been complete ; 
and soon as the horn was sounded, as above indicated, the negroes 
began to assemble from all directions. Lewis told the Marshal 
that he had .better desist from attempting to m.ake the arrest, 
otherwise blood would be shed. All this time the negroes were 
gathering, and evinced by their manner a spirit of the most 
determined resistance, an.d some of them were ab-eady standing 
with their guns cocked, and near enough to hear the conversation 
of the officer with Hanway and Lewis. The Marshal, seeing 
the number of the negroes and the threatening demonstrations 
made by them, asked Lewis to influence the negroes not to Are 
upon them, and he would withdraw his party, but was told by 
him that " the negroes might defend themselves." The blacks 
in the house, seeing their friends gathered in such abundance, 
came out and mingled with them. " Hanway walked his horse 
up to where the crowd of negroes were, and he spoke something- 
low to them, and they gave one^siiout ; he walked his horse about 
twenty or thirty yards, and looked towards them, and they iired 
up where Mr. Gorsuch was." ^' 

Edward Gorsuch immediately fell, and his son Dickinson, run- 
ning to his assistance, w^as also shot in the breast and lungs, and 
fell to the ground. Dr. Petirce was likewise shot in several 
places, but succeeded in nuiking his escape. Deputy Marshal 
Kline, Joshua Gorsuch, and the other two individuals, Kelson 
and Ilutchins, who formed part of the capturing party, all speed- 
ily made their escape as best they could. Edward Gorsuch was 
mutilated by the negroes, his pockets rifled of about §300, and 
left lying dead where he fell. Ilis son Dickinson was lescued 
from death through the interposition of an old colored man, who 
begged of the murderers to spare his life, and he was shortly 
afterwards removed by some white persons who visited the scene, 
to the house of Levi Pownall, where he lay a considerable time 
before he could be removed. 



* Evidence of Marshal Kline in Report of Christiana Tragedy, p. 7. 



150 A REVIEW OF THE 

As soon as tlie news of this ocrurrence readied Lancaster, 
John L. Thompson, the District Attorney, and J. Franklin Kei- 
gart, an Alderman, accompanied by some of the most resolnto 
citizens, repaired at once" to Christiana, and after taking certain 
legal steps, proceeded to arrest the suspected parties. Nine were 
taken in less than two hours. Castner Ilanway and Elijah Lewis, 
hearing of the warrants, surrendered themselves without resist- 
ance. All were committed by Alderman Eeigart, and conveyed 
to the Lancaster Jail for a preliminary hearing. The United States 
Marshal, the United States District Attorney and the Commis. 
sioner, w4th a strong force of Marines and a detachment of 
Philadelphia police, arrived shortly afterwards at Christiana, and 
lent their aid in making arrests of those supposed to be impli- 
cated in the transaction. Both parties proceeded to make arrests, 
and ia a short time every section of country was pretty well 
scoured. A large number of additional prisoners were brought 
in, and among them two whites, one named Scarlet, and the other 
Hood. 

It became a question of considerable dispute between the State 
and national authorities, as to the disposition of the prisoners. 
District Attorney Thompson contended, that the prisoners had 
been guilty of tlie highest crime known to the law of Pennsyl- 
vania, wilfull and deliberate murder, and that as this had occurred 
in Lancaster County, the prisoners should be taken to Lancaster 
for trial. John "\Y. Ashmead, the United States District Attorney, 
on the contrary, insisted that the prisoners had been guilty of 
the crime of treason, in levying war against the United States 
authorities. In this he was sustained by the Commissioner, E. 
D. Ingraham, and iinally a compromise was effected, by which 
each party was allowed to dispose of its own arrests. A prelimi- 
nary hearing of the prisoners was held before Alderman Reigart, 
at which several witnesses were examined. At this hearing, J. 
W. Ashmead, Robert J. Brent and William B. Fordney, ap- 
peared for the prosecution, and Thaddeus Stevens for the prison- 
ers. Castner Ilanway, Elijah LeAvis, John Morgan, Henry Sims 
and Jacob Moore, were committed to answer the charge of 
treason, and delivered into the custody of A. E, Roberts, United 
States Marshal for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 

No event, scarcely, could have occurred that would have 
aroused a more profound excitement throughout the country 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 151 

tlian was occasioned by this riot at Christiana. Political rancor 
was in this occurrence fanned to its highest pitch. The news- 
papers gave full scope to the rehearsal of the facts as they were 
reported; and these in many cases grossly exaggerated, as has 
become usual with the modern newsjjaper press. The deed was 
as variantly viewed as were the creeds of the different parties. 
Even in Pennsylvania, partisans condemned or exculpated the 
act of the rioters as their political proclivities dictated. Shrewd 
observers fully comprehended the nature of the transaction, and 
where the fault originated ; but this did not appear upon the 
surface; and hence the widely different reports that were circulated. 
Blame was sought to be attached to the Whig Governor of Penn- 
sylvania, because of believed indifference shown by him in taking 
steps to aid in arresting the rioters. It was not till the fourth day 
after the riot that he issued his proclamation, offering a reward for 
the capture of tlie murderei's of Mr. Gorsuch. And even this was 
delayed until a letter, signed by John Cadwallader, C. Ingorsoll, 
John W. Forney, and others, had demanded of him tliat he take 
measures to " vindicate the outraged laws of the Commonwealth." 
The division in sentiment in Pennsylvania that chietiy obtained 
as regards the riot, was seen to be marked very considerably by 
party lines. It was not forgotten that the fugitive slave law had 
met with almost universal opposition from the Northern Whigs 
in Congress ; and the condemnation of the act of the rioters was 
not believed to be sincere upon the part of many of that party, 
who were loud in its denunciation. But with many Whigs it 
was so ; for, as before seen, by no means all of this party had 
become tainted with abolition principles. Being a Whig at that 
time, however, subjected an individual even in Pennsylvania to 
suspicion, and something was needed to remove it. But it was 
in the South that this negro riot created the greatest commotion. 
In this section it was viewed as an illustration of the JSTorthern 
resistance to the compromise of 1850, which might still be 
expected to display itself in one form or other ; and which would 
thus render it a dead letter upon the statute books. A lingering 
faith, however, that the majority of the people of Pennsylvania 
and of the North, were still friends of the Federal Constitution 
and the laws made thereunder, induced the South to hope that 
the insulted authority of the nation would yet vindicate itself in 
the Northern tribunals of justice. 



153 A EEVIEW OF THE 

On Monday, IsTovember 24tli, 1851, the trial of Castner Han- 
way, for treason, was commenced in the United States Circuit 
Court before Judges Grier and Kane. The counsel who appeared 
for the United States were, John W. Ashmead, James R. Lud- 
low and George W. Ashmead ; also, James Cooper and Robert 
W. Brent for Maryland. The counsel for Castner Ilanway were 
John M. Reed, Thaddeus Stevens, Joseph J. Lewis and Theodore 
Cuyler. The trial lasted fifteen days, and was handled on both 
sides with masterly ability. Although, without doubt, Mr. 
Stevens was the brain of the defense in this trial, yet because of 
his known anti-slavery sentiments, it was deemed prudential that 
to John M. Read should be entrusted its principal management. 
After the arguments of counsel on both sides had been made 
and the Court had submitted their views of the law, the Jury 
upon retiring from the box, returned after an absence of ten 
minutes and reported a verdict of " Kot guilty." Castner Han- 
way and Elijah Lewis were then brought to Lancaster to answer 
any charge that might be preferred against them. An indict- 
ment was laid before the Grand Jury for murder, but the Jury 
ignored the bill, and thus ended the Christiana Riot Case. 

This trial, in a measure, illustrated the inutility of attempting, 
under our form of government, to convict an offender when a 
respectable and influential party openly espouses his cause. 
Members of the Anti-Slavery Society were present in court dur- 
ing the time of this trial, openly manifesting their sympathy 
for the accused ; also for the other prisoners, black and white, 
that were implicated with him in the transaction. When " Har- 
vey Scott, a free negro, who had thrice testified — once at Chris- 
tiana, once at Lancaster, and once at Philadelphia — to the fact of 
being an eye witness to the murder of Mr. Gorsuch ; and now 
on this trial, influenced by bribes, or some other corrupt con- 
sideration, when placed on the stand by the United States, openly 
confessed that he had thrice committed perjury, and then swore 
on this trial that he was not present and knew nothing about the 
affair; this pei'jury was received with open applause in the 
court room. Again, the counsel for the defense applied to the 
Court for an order to bring out some twenty-four of the negroes 
in prison to see which of them could be identified as participants 
in the treason, by Henry H. Kline (the Deputy Marshal), a 
material witness for the prosecution. At the opening of the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 153 

court, on the next day, these negroes were seen sitting m a row, 
snpj)orted on each side by white females, who, to the disgust of 
all respectable citizens, gave them open sympathy and comite- 
nance ; each of the negroes appeared with new comforts around 
their necks — their hair carefully' parted and their clothing in 
every respect, so as to present one uniform appearance to the 
eye as far as possible — all done doubtless for the double purpose 
of giving " aid and comfort " to the accused murderers of a white 
man, and of confusing so important a witness as Kline, in respect 
to their identity. And this was manifestly done with the privity, 
sufferance and consent of the officers having charge of the 
prisoners, and passed unrebuked."* Sucli a degree of sympathy 
did the members of the Anti-Slavery Society manifest for those 
accused of participation in the Christiana riot, that on Thanks- 
giving Day they caused a banquet dinner to be prepared for the 
prisoners, and A. E. Roberts, the United States Marshal, con- 
fessed in open court " that he had not only assisted at the dinner 
but had sat down and partaken sparingly."f 

The decisive points ruled by Judge Grier, and which proved 
fatal to the prosecution, were in the following words : 

"Without desiring to invade the perogatives of the jury, in judging 
of the facts of this cas3, the Court feel bound to say, that they do not 
think the transaction with wliich the prisoner is charged with being con- 
nected rises to the dignity of treason, or a levying of war — ^not because 
the number or force was insufficient, but first — for want of any proof of 
a previous conspiracy to make a general and public resistance to any law 
of the United States ; second — there is no evidence that any person cou- 
nected in the transaction knew that there were any sucli Acts of Congress, 
as they were charged with conspiracy to resist by force and arms, or 
had any other intention than to protect one another from what they 
termed kidnappers — by which slang term, they included not only actual 
kidnappers, but all masters and owners seeking to recapture their slaves, 
and the officers and agents assisting them." X 

Southern hopes, in the above trial, were once more disap- 
pointed. The tempting cup of promise which had been carried 
to the lips in the compromise of 1850, was thus again rudely 
dashed to the earth ; and nothing save chagrin and*mortification 
were left to console those south of the Mason and Dixon parallel. 
The South was an integral portion of the Confederacy, the Con- 

•"Report of Robert J. Brent on the Christiana Treason Trial to the Gov- 
ernor of Maryland, p, 5. 
fReport of R. J. Brent, p. 4. 
I Report of R. J. Brent, p. 7. 



154 A REVIEW OF THE 

stitution recognized their rights of property, and the National 
Congress, in clearly defined terms, had guaranteed them these ; 
and yet all as they felt to no purpose. Their citizens were treated 
as culprits and assassins when going North to lay claim to their 
escaped property; yea, even in the event whieli had but just 
occurred, the soil of Pennsylvania (without any redress being ac- 
corded) had drunk the blood of a most respectable citizen of Mary- 
land, who had dared to cross tlie threshold of his State to seek 
his fugitive slaves. Another bond of confidence between the 
North and South was again snapped asunder, and still more feeble 
became those yet remaining. The fugitive slave law became 
virtually a dead letter in most of the Northern States, and tlie 
feelings of each section grew more and more estranged towards 
the other. And all this was but leading the North and South up 
to that pinnacle of mutual hate, from which both to free them- 
selves, voluntarily plunged into the gulf of revolution and civil 
convulsion, which a near future had in store for them. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. 155 



CHAPTER X. 

THE KA.NSAS-NEBRASKA BILL, WITH THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COM- 
PROMISE. ORIGIN, RAMIFICATION AND ASPECTS OF THE 
REPUBLICAN PARTY. 

The 33d Congress assembled in December, 1853. Mr. Stevens 
not being a member of this Congress, again devoted his attention 
to the practice of his profession, a career in which he was always 
remarkably successful. After the close of his second Congress- 
ional term, he foiind his legal business by no means diminished ; 
and for the next six years he was little heard of outside of Lan- 
caster County, as mingling in political strife. These j^ears were 
for him a period of great professional activity ; and in many of 
the most important suits tried in the courts of Pennsylvania, he 
was during this period the leading counsel. He nevertheless 
remained no indifferent spectator of public events, as they were 
then transpiring. And all this time he held himself in readiness 
to act his part when public sentiment might warrant his partici- 
pation. 

Upon the opening of Congress in December, 1853, it was 
found that certain portions of the public domain, embraced in the 
Louisiana cession, were already sufficiently populated to require 
local governments. Two delegates had been chosen by the people 
of this Territory who were awaiting admission into the National 
Legislature, and seeking local organizations for their constituents. 
On the 4th of December, 1853, Mr. Dodge, of Iowa, introduced 
a bill into the Senate for the organization of a Territorial Gov- 
ernment for ISTebraska, which was referred to the committee on 
Territories, of which Stephen A. Douglasi was chairman. On 
the 4th of the following January, Mr. Douglas reported back 
this bill, with amendments so changing its language, as to make 
it accord with the language of the Utah and New Mexico Bill of 
1850, on the question of slavery. This Bill was accompanied 
with an elaborate report, stating fully the reasons that had in- 



158 A REVIEW OF THE 

diiced the Committee to change its phraseolgy in these particulars. 
The principle aimed at by the Committee was expressed in the 
following words : 

" In the judgment of your Committee, those measures (compromise of 
1850) were intended to have a far more comprehensive and enduring 
effect than the mere adjustment of the difficulties arising out of the 
recent acquisitions of Mexican territory. They were designed to estab- 
lisii certain great principles, which would not only furnish adequate 
remedies for existing evils, but in all time to come avoid the perils of a 
similar agitation, by withdrawing the question of slavery from the Halls 
of Congress and the political arena, and committing it to the arbitra- 
ment of those who were immediately interested, and alone i-esjionsible 
for its consequences." 

The report concluded with these words : 

" The substitute for the bill which your Committee have prepared, and 
which is commended to the favorable action of the Senate, proposes to 
carry these propositions and principles into practical oiaeration in the 
precise language of the compromise measures of 1850." 

Senator Douglas, speaking of the report of the Committee, 
said : 

"We were aware that from 1820 to 1850, the abolition doctrine of Con- 
gressional interference with slavery in the Territories and new States, 
had so far prevailed as to keep up an incessant agitation in Congress and 
throughout the country, Whenever any new Territory was to be acquired 
or organized. We were also aware that, in 1850, the right of the people 
to decide thife question for themselves, subject only to the Constitution, 
was substituted for the doctrine of congressional intervention. The first 
question, therefore, which the Committee were called upon to decide, 
and indeed the only question of any material importance, in forming this 
bill was this : Shall we adhere to and carry out the principle recognized 
by the compromise measures of 1850, or shall we go back to the old 
exploded doctrine of congressional interference, as established in 1820, 
in a large portion of the country, and which it Avas the object of the 
Wilmot proviso, to give a universal application not only to all the terri- 
tory which we then possessed, but all which we might hereafter acquire? 
There were no other alternatives. We were compelled to frame the bill 
upon the one or the other of these two principles. The doctrine of 1820, 
or the doctrine of 1850, must prevail. In the discharge of the duty im- 
posed upon us by the Senate, the Committee could not hesitate upon 
this point, whether we consulted our individual opinions and principles 
or those which were known to be entertained and boldly avowed by a 
large majority of the Senate. The two great political parties of the 
country stood solemnly pledged before the world to adhere to tlie com- 
promise measures of 1850 in principle and substance. A large majority 
of the Senate, indeed every member of the body, I believe, excejit the 
two avowed Abolitionists (Mr. Chase and Mr. Sumner,) profess to belong 
to the one or the other of these parties, and hence were Bupposed to be 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 157 

imdcr a high moral obligation to carry out the principle and siibstance of 
those measures in all the new territorial organizations. The report of 
the Committee was in accordance with this obligation."* 

The original bill as amended and reported by the Committee, 
was received in some parts of the country as effecting the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise Act, whilst in others it was differ- 
ently construed. In order that all ambiguity as regards this point 
might be removed, Archibald Dixon, a Whig Senator from Ken- 
tucky, on the IGth of January, gave notice that when the 
Nebraska Bill should come up for consideration, he would offer 
an amendment repealing the Eighth Section of the Missouri Act, 
as being inconsistent with the Compromise of 1850. On the 
following day, Sumner introduced into the Senate a memorial 
against slavery generally, and at tlie same time gave notice that 
when the bill to recognize the Territory should come up for con- 
sideration, he would offer an ameiKlment re-afflrming the old 
Congressional restriction of 1820. /A manifesto was issued from 
Washington on the lOtli of Januai^, denouncing the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise, signed by the following Senators and 
Representatives, viz : S. P. Chase, Charles Sumner, J. R. Gid- 
dings, Edward Wade, Gcrrit Smith and Alexander De A¥itt. 
This remonstrance appeared in all the Al^olition papers of the 
country, and again roused the monster of sectional agitation from 
his slumber. The remonstrants spoke of the old Missouri line 
as a " sacred jpledge^'' never to be violated. It became in their 
estimation a " solemn compact " when its endorsement favored 
their principles. " Three thousand ITew England Clergymen, 
assuming to speak in the name of the Almighty God, joined in 
the chorus. But when did these men, or any of their class 
singly or collectively, ever before acknowledge any binding obli- 
gation of the now and so-called " solemn compact ?" Was it 
when Missouri was denied admission by them under it ? Was it 
when the admission of Arkansas was opposed by them ? Was it 
when the provision was made for the admission of Texas ? Was it 
when a government for Oregon was organized ? Was it when 
this line was voted down for the last time in the House on the 

13th of June, 1850 «"t "^ 
The Committee on Territories, in view of the extent of domain 



*Appendix to Congressional Globe, 33d Congress, 1st Session, p. 336, 
fStephens' War, Vol. II, p. 248. 



153 A REVIEW OF THE 

to be organized, deemed it expedient to divide it into two sepa- 
rate Territorial Governments, one to be named Kansas, and tbe 
other ISTebraska. Accordingly a substitute organizing two Terri- 
tories instead of one was reported in the Senate by Mr. Douglas 
on the 22d of January. The language in each upon the subject 
of slavery was identical, with that in the first Nebraska Bill with 
the exception of that clause which in express words declared the 
Eighth Section of the Missouri Act inoperative. This was in 
the following words : 

*' Except the eighth section of the Act prepatory to the admission of 
Missouri into the Union, approved March 6th, 1820, which being incon- 
sistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress, with slavery 
in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, 
commonly called the Compromise Measures, is hereby declared inopera- 
tive and void ; it being the true intent and meaning of this Act not 
to legislate slavery into any Ten-itory or State, nor to exclude it there- 
from, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate 
their doniestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Consti- 
tution of the United States." 

Senator Douglas, speaking of the Missouri Compromise, 
showed by whose dereliction it had originally been violated, and 
that this violation of it had necessitated the abandonment of the 
principle it had established, and a recurrence to that of non- 
intervention. In his speech of Jam 30th, he said : 

" True, the express enactment of the 8th section of the Missouri Act, 
(now called the Missouri Compromise) only covered the Territory acquired 
from France ; but the principle of the Act, the objects of its adoption, 
the reasons m its support required that it should be extended indefinitely 
westward, so far as our Territory might go, when new purchases should 
be made."* 

"When Texas was admitted into the Union, on motion of Ste- 
phen A. Douglas, then a member of the House, the principle of 
the Missouri Compromise was applied to it without open opposi- 
tion, doubtless lest abolition breach of faith would appear too 
palpable. He also in 1848 made an effort as Senator, to have 
the same principle applied to the newly acq^uired Mexican 
Territory. Of this effort he speaks as follows : 

"Then, sir, in 1848, we acquired from Mexico the country between the 
Eio del Norte and the Pacific Ocean. Immediately after the acquisition, 
the Senate, on my own motion, voted into a bill a provision to extend 
the Missouri compromise indefinitely westward to the Pacific Ocean, in 
the same sense and with the same understanding with which it was 



*Iiational IntdUgencer, February 2d, 1834* 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 159 

originally adopted. That provision passed this body by a decided ma- 
jority — I think by ten at least — and went to the House of Representatives 
and was there defeated by Northern votes. 

" Now, SU-, let us pause and consider for a moment. The lirst time 
that the principles of the Missouri compromise were ever abandoned, the 
first time tliey were ever rejected by Congress, was by the defeat of that 
provision in the House of Reijresentatives in 1848. By whom was that 
defeat effected ? By Northern States with free soil proclivities. It v/as 
the defeat of that Missouri compromise that re-opened the slavery agita- 
tion with all its fury. It was the defeat of that Missouri compromise 
that created the necessity for making a new compromise in 1850. Had 
we been faithful to the principles of the Missouri Act in 1848, this ques- 
tion would not have risen. Who was it that was faithless ? I undertake 
to say it was the very men who now insist that the Missouri compromise 
was a solemn compact and should not be violated and departed from. 
Every man who is now assailing the principle of the bill under consider- 
ation, so far as I am advised, was opposed to the Missouri compromise in 
1848. The veiy men who now arraign me for a departure from the Mis- 
souri compromise are the men who successfully violated it, repudiated it, 
and caused it to be superseded by the compromise measures of 1850. 
Sir, it is with'rather a bad grace that the men who proved false them- 
selves should charge upon me and others, who were ever faithful, the 
responsibilities and consequences of their ow-n treachery. 

"Then, sir, as I before remarked, the defeat of the Missouri compro- 
mise in 1848 having created the necessity for the establislxment of a new 
one in 1850, let us see what that compromise was. 

•' The binding feature of the compromise of 1850 was Congressional 
non-intervention as to slavery in the Territories ; that the people of the 
Territories and of all the States were to be allowed to do as they pleased 
upon the subject of slaverj^, subject only to the provisions of the Consti- 
tution of the United States. 

'•That, sir, was the leading feature of the compromise measures of 
1850. Those measures, therefore, abandoned the idea of a geographical 
line as the boundary between the free and the slave States ; abandoned 
it because, compelled to do it from an inability to maintain it ; and in 
lieu of that substituted the great principle of self-government, which 
would allow the people to do as they thought proper."* 

Speaking of tlie inconsistency of the Abolitionists as regards 
tlie Missouri compromise, Senator Douglas- further said : 

"Did not every Abolitionist and Free Soiler in America denounce the 
Missouri compromise in 1830 ? Did they not for years hunt down, raven- 
ously for his blood, every man who assisted in making that compromise ? 
Did they not, in 1845, when Texas was annexed, denounce all of us who 
went for the annexation of Texas and for the continuation of the Missouri 
compromise line through it ? Did they not, in 1848, denounce me as a 
slavery propagandist, for standing by the principles of the Missouri com- 

*Speech of Douglas, of Jan. SOth, 1854; in National Intelligencer Feb. 
2d, 1854. 



160 A REVIEW OF THE 

promise, and proposing it to be extended to the Pacific Ocean ? Did lliey 
not themselves violate and r^pvidiate it then? Is not the charge of bad 
faith true as to every Abolitionist in America, instead of being true as 
to me and th3 Committee and those who advocate this bill."* 

Mr. Douglas and those co-operating with him, hoped by the 
passage of the Kansas-lSTebraska Bill, that the question of slaveiy 
might be removed from the Halls of Congress, and left with the 
people of the Territories themselves. This legislation was but 
re-introducing first principles which had been abandoned when 
the Missouri Compromise was adopted, and which the Southern 
people accepted with reluctance as being an unjust discrimination 
against their equality as integral members of the Confederacy. 
Alexander II. Stephens, tlie philosophic statesman of the South, 
whilst in Congress, in a speech delivered in the House, February 
ITth, 1854, said : 

" It (the Missouri Compromise) was literally forced upon the South as a 
disagreeable alternative by superior numbers." f 

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill asserted, upon its face, that its true 
intent and meaning was that the question of slavery should be 
left to the people of the Territories to determine for themselves 
whether they desired it, and subject only to the Constitution of 
the United States. Stephen A. Douglas, the author of the bill, 
was violently assailed as false to his own democratic faith which 
execrated all slavery agitation; but he justified his course by 
aflSrming his entire conformity with the compromise measures of 
1850. His object, as he contended, was simply to free the Terri- 
tories from all unconstitutional legislation, and to leave the ques- 
tion of slavery where the framers of the government had 
designed, that is, with the people of the territories themselves. 
The bill was not only discussed with great violence in Congress, 
but was taken up by the abolition press in all sections of the 
]S^orth, and contrary to expectation, the slavery agitation was 
aroused in all its strength and intensity throughout the whole 
country. The discussion produced one of the most terrific politi- 
cal storms that had ever yet raged upon the American continent. 
The very flood-gates and windows of abolition fury seemed now 
for the first time to have been fully oj)ened. The abolition 
Whigs embraced this opportunity to retrieve their fallen political 

"^Speech of Douglas January 30, 1854 ; in National Intelligencer, Feb' 

ruary 2d, 1854. 
\ National Intelligencer, February 34th, 1854. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 161 

fortunes, and unite the North in a sectional contest against the 
South. Public meetings were held in the Northern States, de- 
nouncing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and remon- 
strances to the same effect flooded the National Legislature. 
Large numbers of both political parties jjarticipated in these 
meetings who had given their hearty adhesion to the Compromise 
of 1850, and a monster meeting at Boston, was presided over by 
Samuel S. Elliot, the only "Whig representative from New Eng- 
land, who had favored that last national adjudication of the 
slavery question. 

The Bill, however, passed both Houses of Congress, and be- 
came a law by receiving the signature of the President on the 
last day of May, 1854'. It was clearly the refusal of the Aboli- 
tionists of the North to yield a fair and full acquiescence in tlie 
Missouri Compromise, in letter and spirit, which led to its iinal 
repeal in 1854. And it is also undeniable that this repeal 
simply restored to its original normal position, the doctrine of 
popular sovereignty, as it was designed to obtain from the foun- 
dation of the government. But it must also ba accepted as true, 
that whilst the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, in strict 
interpretation, may have been effected by the principle adopted 
by the Compromise measures of 1850 ; yet no averment was 
made at the time that such was really so ; and it remained for the 
year 1854 to disclose it. The Compromise of 1850, applied to 
the Territory acquired from Mexico, whilst that of 1820 included 
the Louisiana purchase ; and therefore entirely distinctive and, 
separate portions of the territorial domain were embraced by these 
two famous National settlements. The Compromise of 1850 did 
not expressly repeal tliat of 1820, and although it had in spirit 
been repudiated by the North, yet in view of the intense opposi- 
tion that existed to the spread of slavery, over any of the 
Federal territory, policy seemed to dictate that the South should 
only claim what the clear letter of the Constitution and the 
national contracts accorded them. That this was the opinion of 
a considerable number of the leading statesmen both North and 
South, is undoubted ; and even of those voting for the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise were some who regarded the act as 
impolitic, and likely to entail in its train sad consequences. Gen. 
Lewis Cass, whilst sustaining the Kansas-Nebraska Bill thus 
expressed himself regarding the measure : 



1G2 A REVIEW OF THE 

"I should have been better content had the whole subject been left as 
it was in the bill when it was first introduced by the Senator from Illinois, 
without any provision regarding the Missouri Compromise."* 

James Buchanan was another of those statesmen who viewed the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, as in itself altogether im- 
politic and injudicious. " The Compromise measures of 1850 
had his hearty adhesion, as in these he seemed to recognize the 
settlement of the only question that could perhaps for ages 
jeopard the national integrity. With tlie greatest anxiety and 
dread was it, therefore, that he heard, whilst in Europe, of the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854. In a letter wiitten 
to a leading statesman of his party, about the time that the repeal 
began to be mooted, he uttered solemn "words of warning, and 
strongly remonstrated against the abrogation of this time-honored 
compact. He depicted in strong colors the dangers he appre- 
hended would result should this unwise attempt be consummated. 
From an intimate knowledge of the feelings of the people of ithe 
North, he predicted the terrible storm that would be aroused 
throughout the country by such an opening up of the slavery 
agitation as this would occasion."f 

Mr. Buchanan, in the History of his administration on the eve 
of the rebellion, page 28, speaks in this manner of the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise : 

" After a careful review of the history of the Anti-Slavery party from 
its origin, the candid inquirer must admit that up till this period it had 
acted on the aggressive against the South. From the beginning it had 
kept the citizens of the slave-holding States in constant irritation, as well 
as serious apprehension of their domestic peace and security. It is time, 
they had denounced the assailants with extreme rancor and many 
threats, but had done nothing more. In sustaining the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise, however, the Senators and Representatives of the 
Southern States became the aggressors themselves, and thereby placed 
the country in an alarming and dangerous condition from which it has 
never since been rescued." 

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise afforded to the Abol.*- 
tionists the opportunity that was required to unite the North in 
a sectional organization against the South. Many of the North- 
ern Whigs of free soil proclivities had desired to see a party con- 
stituted upon principles adverse to the further spread of slavery, 
and pledged to its final extinction, could any means be devised 

* National Intelligencer, March 7tli, 1854. 

f Harris' Biographical History of Lancaster County, jip. 105-6. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AIMERICA. 163 

for that pui-pose. /The following extracts from addresses made 
by R. C. Winthropp'of Massachusetts, and Thomas Corwin, of 
Ohie^fecrfcirndistingurslied leaders of the Whig party, attest this 
fact : 

'•'Wiiy, my friends, how long is it since it was distinctly declared by 
some of the leaders of the Republican party, that the great remedy for 
existing evils was the formation of a party which should have no South- 
ern v^^ing ; yes, that was the i^hraze — no Southern iving; for it was added 
that as long as there was a Southern wing there must be complainers 
and concessions to the South, and compromises would be the order of the 
day."* 

Thomas Corwin, speaking of the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
pi'Oniise, said: 

"And do you not see how gladly it was seized upon by those who have 
been trying to form a Northern party for years, and how the war-cry 
they raised went up through the whole North, And yet they are the 
very men who had long denounced the compromise as an infringement 
of right and freedom. "f ^ 

It was understood by the leading Whigs that their party was 
composed of elements altogether too inharmonious to remain 
united after the demise of Clay and Webster. The divisions of 
the party, which had for years disclosed themselves in Congress, 
was ample proof of this fact; and it was clear that the dis- 
harmony was every year becoming more apparent and decided. 
After the defeat of Gen. Scott for President, in 1852, crafty 
leaders availed themselves of the American sentiment, by means 
or which to rear an organization that might take the place of the 
old Whig party; and early in 1854 the movements for this pur- 
pose were in active operation. The sentiment upon which this 
new effort to construct a party was based, had repeatedly shown 
itself in the United States, especially in the large cities ; and 
owing to the social elements of the country, it is one that is 
likely, more or less potentially, ever to make itself felt. An 
antagonism to Catholics and foreigners is somewhat natural to 
the bulk. of the Protestant population of America; and this will 
be always greatly manifested when party spirit is dragged into 
the arena. This was the effort in 1854, and the prospect seemed 
for a time as if it might be successful. It was at that time, 
familiarly characterized as the Know Nothing movement, and it 
achieved temporary triumphs in several States of the Union, and 

*Speech of Gov. Winthrop, in National Intelligencer, Oct. 30, 1856. 
\National Intelligencer, Oct. 23J, 1856. 



ICi A REVIEW OF THE 

even stontlj battled for ascendancy in tlie old Commonwealth of 
Virginia. The elections in 1854 in the Northern States, v/ere 
largely influenced by the operations of this party ; to it was 
James Pollock indebted for his election as Governor of Pennsyl- 
vania. The success achieved by this organization was no doubt 
largely due to the fact that it assumed the shape of a secret 
order ; and curiosity (as is ever the case with secret associations) 
induced elements of the most incongruous character to enter it. 
But, because the order was made up of men of radically incom- 
patible views and purposes, its dissolution become simply a ques- 
tion of time. The Whigs who joined the order remained such, 
and so did also tlie Democrats ; and it became soon apparent that 
no views so discordant could long remain united. 

The Know Kothing breeze became- one of the currents that 
served to confuse parties, as they existed in Lancaster County, 
and enabled Mr. Stevens and his political wing to grasp hold of 
the reins of power. He permitted himself to be initiated into a 
secret order, in which he recognized political power looming up 
for himself in the distance ; and for the time he forgot the oppo- 
sition that he had years before waged against the Masonic fra- 
ternity. The American movement was for Mr. Stevens a very 
important. one, so far as his future prospects were concerned. It 
served to prostrate his princij^al antagonists amongst the Silvei"- 
Grey "Whigs, and left him prospectively the master of the field. 
Although unable to secure the Congressional nomination for 
himself in 1854, yet he manipulated affairs so adroitly that A. E. 
Poberts, an intimate and confidential political friend, was made 
the party choice. This was a near advance to the goal of his 
own ambition. He had now become the power behind the 
throne. 

But what served most to unite a ISTorthem sectional party, was the 
opposition which arrayed itself against the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise and the further extension of slavery. The Whigs 
in the Free States in 1854, were almost unanimously opposed to 
the repeal, as were likewise a considerable number of Democrats. 

In the meetings that were held to denounce the measure, men 
of both political parties participated, but by far the larger 
proportion was made up of Whigs. The Abolitionists sought at 
once to form a party of fused elements, united in opposition to 
the spread of the hated Southern institution ; but this met with 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 1C5 

a spirited resistance from tliose wlio still preferred tlie Whig 
organization. The Whigs, in their State Conventions held in 
the ISTorthern States, repudiated the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise ; but many of the trusted leaders of tliis old National 
party resisted its abandonment for what they clearly saw would 
become a sectional one, and which would doubtless endanger the 
perpetuity of the American Union. 

The old party of Jefferson had a difficult task in the North 
during the campaign of 1854. The party being virtually com- 
mitted to the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, found that 
these would prove a heavy burden in the Free States. Stephen 
A. Douglas, the author of the bill, upon his return home from 
Congress, met in Chicago a storm of opposition, for which he 
was not prepared. Those, who on former occasions, had listened 
with delight to the glowing eloquence of the Illinois Senator, 
refused now to hear him ; and as often as he attempted to speak 
in his defense, they drowned h:s voice with their hisses and 
groans. Little more favorable receptions were accorded to him 
in some other sections of his State. ; Democratic meetings ad- 
dressedbyjiim, would as soon as adjourned, extemporize a new 
one, and pass resolutions condemning his action as a Senator in 
Congress, and denouncing the Kansas- Nebraska Bill. In every 
State of the NQrth,...the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 
proved a cause of disturbance in the Democratic party. The 
majority of the party sustained the principles of the measure ; 
but so intense and powerful was the opposition in some States, 
that the party conventions refused to endorse it. In many 
States the conventions split upon this all engrossing question. 
The party leaders in the North strove to meet the threatening 
catastrophe by endeavoring to prevent the measure from being 
made a party test. A number of leading Democrats of Michigan, 
in 1854, issued a circular urging as follows : 

" We respectfully submit, that every consideration, both in principle 
and policy, appeals to us to stand firmly against the Kansas-Nebraska 
Bill as a party test. It is a ineasure which is strongly disapproved of by 
a large portion of the Democracy of the nation. Unwisely introduced, 
it has already done infinite mischief, and if made a party test it will 
inevitably divide the Democratic party, and let loose a storm of the 
wildest agitation." 

The Democracy of the Empire State of New York were 
divided into the Hards and Softs, the latter having largely the 



163 A REVIEW OF THE 

preponderance. Resolutions demanding the restoration of tlie 
Missouri Compromise passed botli Houses of the New York 
Legislature by great majorities, and in Massachusetts, such were 
adopted in the Senate by a unanimous vote, and in the House, 
consisting of 400 members, with only thirteen negative votes. 
In all parts of the North the repeal made an instantaneous im- 
pression, and the Democracy, as never before, began to stagger 
under the unendurable burden. W. B. S. Moore, Chairman of 
the Maine Democratic Committee on Resolutions in the Con- 
vention held in June, 1854, remarked : 

' ' "We came into power eighteen months ago with an unprecedented 
majority in the nation ; and in the State we had a great moral power — 
perhaps too much. Since then, changes have come over the aspect of 
and the prospect of the Democracy. We have lost Maine, Rhode Island, 
Connecticut, and it is nearly a draw game in New Hampshire, that ought 
to stand firm as her granite hills." 

Skelton, an Anti-Nebraska Democratic Representative of New 
Jersey, said : 

" The party was strong and united until the passage of this bill. Now 
it is divided in every Congressional District. It was introduced as a 
measure of Peace, but it has rent the party and renewed the slavery agi- 
tation." 

The Charleston Mercury^ seeing the coming storm that was 
rising in the North, in its issue of June 21st, 1854, said : 

"The spectacle presented by the North and South at the present mo- 
ment is well calculated to arrest the attention of thoughtful men. In 
the former we find society convulsed ; all the slumbering elements of 
sectional bitterness roused and slavery agitation awake again, after its 
brief and delusive sleep, strengthened by new accessions and eager for 
the onset. Never before have the Northern press approached so near to 
unanimity in the cause of abolition. Never before were all other issues 
so far buried, and the sentiment and voice of the whole section so united 
in war upon the South." 

The fall elections of 1854 in the Northern States, one after 
another swept from power the party which was held responsible 
for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Maine, that had 
remained firm to her democratrc moorings since 1840, was carried 
for the new party by an immense majority. The other Eastern 
States followed in the same line ; and New York wheeled under 
the banner of Anti-slavery extension. Not a single Congressman 
from the Empire State that had supported the repeal, was re- 
elected, and the Keystone State gave a congressional delegation 
strongly Anti-Nebraska. Ohio rallied by an immense majority 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 1G7 

to tlie Anti-Slavery standards, electing all Anti-lSTebraska Con- 
gressmen. The People's party triumphed in Indiana, and the 
strong oaks of the Democracy bent beneath the blasts of the op- 
position. The members of Congress throughout the whole 
ISTorth, who had supported the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 
were almost all defeated, and Anti-Slavery ideas rose at once to 
ascendancy and power. The revolution passed like a hurricane 
aver the North ; and the new party in most sections styling itself 
Kepublican, bore the banner of victory. The fruits of the long 
Anti-slavery agitation had ripened; and a sectional JSTorthem 
organization was the result of the struggle. The agitators had at 
length gained the prize ; the JN'orthern States were now united 
against the South and her institutions in clear and unmistakable 
opposition; and time alone could determine the result of the 
conflict. "^ , 



168 A REVIEW OF THE 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE STRUGGLE FOR ASCENDENCY IN KANSAS. THE DEVELOPMENT OF CON- 
FLICTING VIEWS INTO SECTIONAL ANTAGONISM AND THE 
ULTIMATE TRIUMPH OF REPUBLICANISM. 

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise opened the Territories 
to all the social institutions of the different States of the Union. 
It was believed that this would terminate the national conflict on 
the question of slavery by removing it from the Halls of Con- 
gress, and leaving it for disposition with the people of the Terri- 
tories themselves ; but in doing so, the public interest was only 
the more aroused and intensified. The repeal of the compromise 
appeared to the l^orthern mind such a flagrant violation of every- 
thing that was sacred in compact, that it was prepared to inter- 
pose every obstacle to the introduction of slavery into the new 
Territories, which might in any wise baffle the friends of the in- 
stitution. Even Kansas, the most Southern Territory, belonged 
fo that part of the public domain which had been consecrated to 
freedom ; and now that this should be snatched from its heritage 
and offered as a prize to the fleetest occupant, was to ISTorthern 
sentiment offensive in the highest degree. The views and policy 
of statesmen could not be expected to countervail the feelings of 
the masses, that had for upwards of two decades been influenced 
by Anti-Slavery agitation ; and which was every year evincing 
greater opposition to the spread of the hated institution of the 
Southern States. ISTorthern sentiment on no former occasion rose 
in such unanimity and earnestness to utter its protest against the 
introduction of slavery into the Territories, as it did when Kan- 
sas and Kebraska were organized and laid open for settlement. 

An Emigrant Aid Society was accordingly incorporated in 
Boston in the year 1854, by the Legislature of Massachusetts, for 
the pui-pose of encouraging settlers to emigrate to Kansas, who 
would be pledged to resist the introduction of slavery into the 
new State. In the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN A^IERICA. 169 

Sontliern people, on tlie contrary, seemed to recognize simply 
the removal of all unjust discrimination against them in the 
common Territories of the nation ; and the restoration of those 
rights which they had originally enjoyed prior to the year 1820. 
The movement of the Abolitionists in Massachusetts, therefore, 
had the effect of arousing in the Southern mind a determination 
of resistance ; and societies were speedily organized in Missouri 
and elsewhere, pledged to promote the interests of settlers from 
the South and those who favored the pro-slavery canse. These 
acts of the antagonistic parties, so different from what had be- 
fore occurred in the settlement of the Territories, displayed the 
wonderful zeal of the contestants ; and at once attracted public 
attention to Kansas as the prize which should reward for his 
skill and prowess the conquering gladiator of his country. The 
contest for Kansas thus rose immediately from State to national 
importance ; and the removal of the question from Congress, 
served but to light the flames of strife between the ISTorth and 
South in all parts of the country. The removal, therefore, was 
fatal to the peace of the Republic, and proved also fatal to the 
hopes of any man in the North, who had antici^^ated applause 
and position from his instrumentality in its accomjjlishment. 

Settlers from the South and emigrants from the ]N"orth were 
hurried into the new Territory, all more or less eager to win 
Kansas for their party. The enthusiast and the fanatic, the 
adventurous and the daring, all moved to this inviting El Dorado 
of their political hopes, and the mixture was a sample of demo- 
cratic society in its native compound.'^ Anarchy and misrule 
held high carnival in the new Territory, and for a time marauding 
bands of partisan settlers were the only legislators who dispensed 
law as their passions and prejudices dictated. Both of the politi- 
cal parties who were struggling for ascendency in the new region, 
were amply represented by correspondents, whose chief aim was 
to depict that which would meet the warmest reception in the 
circle of their readers. The truthful chronicler, never popular, 
was especially unadapted to such a state of society. Partisans 
must have the food they desire, and such as will minister pleasure 



* The democratic society, here meant, is that form of the body politic 
where the government is assumed to reside in tlie corporate mass ; and 
it is not intended to designate any political party which may at any time 
have borne that designation. 



170 A EEVIEW OF THE 

to tlieir corrupted appetites. An admirable field was presented in 
Kansas for tlie Eastern and Southern press ; indeed, tlie narrative 
of the same event, from different pens, appeared as altogether 
separate occurrences, and only at times could the identity be dis- 
covered from a similarity of names. But the party readers who 
are content to receive one version of a story, could not but be 
incensed to the highest degree by the iniquity and injustice that 
were perpetrated as they conceived upon their friends in the new 
Territory. Section was thus aroused against section, and this 
chiefly effected through the instrumentality of the party press, 
one of the great evils of republican institutions. 

A. H. Eeeder was appointed Governor of the new Territory, 
and he, with such other officers as the territorial condition re- 
quired, arrived in Kansas in the fall of 1854. It being too late 
to organize the full machinery of the Territory, no election was 
held except for a delegate to Congress, which resulted pro-slavery, 
in the choice of John W. Whitfield. Early in 1855, a census 
having been taken, an election for a Territorial Legislature and 
County officers was ordered on the 30th of March. This resulted 
in a Southern victory, and as the Free State men charged, by the 
aid of Missouri invaders. In such a state of society, nothing 
else should have been expected, for the kind of voters who flock 
to new Territories are not those who weigh scruples when parti- 
san interests are at stake. That their opponents were unable to 
counteract all the frauds committed by the Missourians, was not 
because greater conscientiousness interj)osed, but rather, that no 
opportunity afforded the means. It was, in truth, the lawless ele- 
ments of society in conflict, and only somewhat restrained by the 
subordination to which the General Government had subjected 
them. Murder, bloodshed and rapine will always be the con- 
comitants of such states of the body politic. 

But the Legislature as elected, was convened by the Governor, 
and proceeded to enact a code of laws, molded by the most intense 
pro-slavery feelings, and drafted in the interests of party views. 
The formation of Kansas as a Slave State, was the animating 
motive of every legislator who favored the adopted code. The 
enactments of this Legislature was water upon the abolition mill. 
The Northern press teemed with denunciations of an assembly 
that was held up as representing Southern sentiments and views. 
The Kansas settlers were amongst the extremes of their parties. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 171 

Whilst the one party became extreme in its legislation, the other 
was equally so in its resistance. Instead of waiting until they 
might disposses the Southern party at the ballot-box, the Free 
State men showed the utmost lawlessness in organizing at Topeka, 
an independent government in opposition to that iirst elected, 
and which had the regularity of law in its favor. Having framed 
a Constitution, elected a Governor, Legislature and other County 
officers, they applied to Congress for admission into the Union, but 
were justly rejected, if for no other reason than that they lacked 
that formal and legal status which entitled them to make appli- 
cation. Between two antagonistic territorial organizations, one 
defying the other, disturbances must necessarily occur; and it 
was only owing to the interposing authority of the General Gov- 
ernment that the territory was not precipitated into a party colli- 
sion, that might have engulphed the whole Union in the flames 
of civil war. The contestants were rapidly preparing for a clash 
of anus ; and the outposts first met on the plains of Kansas, and 
fought their initial sectional conflict. 

The General Government nobly strove to hold the balance of 
justice even between the parties of Kansas ; but law and order 
demanded that no other authority should be recognized than that 
which was created by virtue of the original charter. When, 
therefore, the Legislature chosen under the Free State Constitu- 
tion, adopted at Topeka, determined to assemble on the 4th of 
July, 1856, they were dispersed by Col. Sumner with a force of 
regulars, by the orders of President Pierce. The spring and 
summer of 1856 was the principal period during which the Kan- 
sas war raged ; and which formed a fertile theme for the abolition 
papers of the North in the Presidential campaign of that year. 
The war, in itself, was of little consequence, save as a means of 
inflaming ISTorthern and Southern sentiment. One of the prin- 
cipal conflicts was the battle of " Black Jack," wherein twenty- 
eight Free State men, led by old John Brown, fought a somewhat 
superior number of Southerners and defeated them. But the 
Bepublican papers were glutted with the stories of Meediiig 
Kansas / some of these possessing a grain of truth, but lai'gely 
fictitious, and retailed for partisan circulation in the campaign 
then pending. It was the discussion of this fertile subject, the 
difficulties in Kansas, that served largely to solidify the Kepubli- 
can party into symmetrical proportions, and give it that strength 



172 A REVIEW OF THE 

and full sectional importance which it obtained in the year 1856. 

Although the opposition to the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise in many parts of the North, had united itself in 1854 
into a party styled Republican ; yet in Pennsylvania the resist- 
ance was unorganized. No steps had been taken in Lancaster 
County, the home of Thaddeus Stevens, for the organization of 
the new party until the year 1855 ; and when it was iirst sug- 
gested to him by a political friend that something should be done 
to organize such a movement in the county, the project, instead 
of meeting his approbation, was rather discouraged. Political 
advancement was the goal upon which. Mr. Stevens had lixed his 
eye ; and knowing the character of the people of his district, he 
trusted not to commit his fortunes to an untried bark, that had 
not yet been fairly launched upon the waters of American con- 
servatism ; and which had but made its passage in the smaller 
bays of radical innovation. Not forgetful that his course in 
Congress, as regards the Compromise of 1850, had bolted the 
doors of the National Assembly against him, he chose to pursue 
the path which policy dictated and watch the political gales be- 
fore he would permit his vessel to be trimmed. But the move- 
ment of Republicanism was onwards, and the Keystone State was 
unable to remain aloof from its influence ; and finally a meeting 
of those favorable to the cause was announced to meet in Fulton 
Hall, in the City of Lancaster, and organize the new party in 
the county. Those who assembled upon this occasion did not 
exceed seventeen persons in all ; the great body of the Whig 
leaders absented themselves until they might see what success the 
future promised. Consistency, however, compelled the attend- 
ance of Mr. Stevens at this meeting. Republicanism was the 
movement in which the principles he cherished had ultimated ; 
and it was necessary that he should obtain the control over it in 
his district ; otherwise he would be washed into political retire- 
ment. He Avas present and addressed the small meeting, and 
thus placed himself as its leader in that field over which his 
influence extended. At a subsequent meeting he was selected to 
represent the Republican party of Lancaster County in the 
Philadelphia Convention of 1856 for the nomination of candi- 
dates for President and Yice-President of the United States. 

The 34th Congress assembled in Washington, December 3d, 
1855, and then began the great contest in which the sectional 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 173 

Republican party strove for ascendency in tlie Halls of I^a- 
tional Legislation. This was the long struggle for the election 
of Speaker in the House of Representacives, which lasted over 
two months, and ended in the election of. Nathaniel P. Banks, 
the candidate of sectional ideas. In this triumph of Northern 
opposition to the spread of slavery, the Republican party saw the 
clearest omen of its future victory and triumph ; and the leaders 
now exerted themselves to the utmost of their abihty, to cement 
and unite the organization in all the States of the North. The 
first convention of this party from the Northern States, assembled 
in Pittsburgh in February, 1856 ; and this was followed by that 
of June 17th, which met in Philadelphia and nominated candi- 
dates for President and Yice-President of the United States. 
John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton were the candidates of 
the Philadelphia Republican Convention. TLaddeus Stevens 
was a member of this convention, although he took no very 
prominent part in the proceedings. The adopted platform placed 
the party in open and avowed resistance to the further extension 
of slavery ; and made the organization the expression of the anti- 
slavery sentiment of the Northern States. One of the resolutions 
of the Philadelphia Convention declared : 

' ' That the Constitution confers upon Congress, sovereign power over 
the Territories of the United States for their government ; and that in 
the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the duty of Congress 
to prohibit in the Territories, those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy 
and slavery." 

It was clear to all discerning men, in view of the composition 
of the Republican party, that its objects as expressed in its plat- 
form were simply secondary to the one idea, the entire abolition 
of slavery throughout the Southern States. The announcement 
of the real design of the party leaders would, however, have been 
fatal to their prospects of success ; for much as the people of the 
North were opposed to slavery, they were not yet prepared for 
an unconstitutional attack upon the rights of their Southern 
brethren. But the leaders adopted the whole argument of the 
Abolitionists for the purpose of educating public sentiment up to 
the highest demands of the radical school ; and at the same time 
announced their objects to be simply the confinement of slavery 
within its bounds. The growing national corruption was fully 
e'S'inced in this attitude of the new party, which was so organized 
that it might gain power under false colors. The crafty argument 



174 A REVIEW OF THE 

was likewise made use of, that tlie exclusion of slavery was not 
opposed for the sake of the negro, but because it was desired that 
the Territory be preserved for the free settlers of the Korth — 
" free homes for free na^en." 

The people of the South, and the calm and considerative of 
the N^orth saw, with the greatest alarm, the advances of the new 
party threatening the peace and prosperity of the Union. The 
maxims of the Kepublican creed promulgated the doctrine dan-- 
gerous to free institutions, that the will of the majority may 
determine the constitutional and vested rights of minorities. 
The principle thus announced was revolutionary in itself, de- 
structive of all constituted authority, and engendered in the 
Ked Republican teachings of the old world. Patriotic men of 
all sections, dreaded the consequences likely to ensue to liberty, 
should the revolutionary party of the Korth succeed in grasping 
the control of the Federal Government, and many of them ad- 
monished their countrymen of the dangers that threatened the 
integrity of the Union, and earnestly advised them to beware of 
the principles of sectionalism. Millard Fillmore, who had just 
returned from Europe, when he saw the aspect which the Eepubli- 
can party occupied in 1856,' spoke as follows: 

" But this is not all, sir. We see a political party presenting candidates 
for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency, selected for the first time from 
the Free States alone, with the avowed purpose of electing these candi- 
dates by the suffrages of one part of the Union only, to rule over the 
whole United States. Can it be possible that those who are engaged in 
Buch a measure can have seriously reflected upon the consequences which 
m.ust inevitably follow in case of success ? Can they have the madness 
or the folly to believe that our Southern brethren would submit to be 
governed by such a Chief Magistrate ? Would he be required to follow 
the same rule prescribed by those who elected him in making his appoint- 
ments ? If a man living south of Mason and Dixon's line be not worthy 
to be President and Vice-President, would it be proper tt) select one 
from the same quarter as one of his Cabinet Council, or to represent the 
nation in a foreign country, or, indeed, to collect the revenue or ad- 
minister the laws of the United States? If not, what new rule is the 
President to adopt in se'ecting men for office that the people themselves 
discard in selecting hirn ? These are serious but practical questions, and 
in order to appreciate them fully it is but only necessary to turn the 
tables upon ourselves. Suppose that the South, having the majority of 
electoral votes, should declare that they would only have slave-holders 
for President and Vice-President, and should elect such by their exclu- 
sive suffrages to rule over us at the North ; do you think we would sub- 
mit to it ? No, not for one moment ! And do you believe that your 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 175 

Soutliern brethren are less sensitive on this subject than you are, or leP3 
jealous of their rights ? If you do, let me tell you that you are mistaken. 
And, therefore, you must see tliat, if this sectional party succeeds, it 
leads inevitably to the destruction of tliis beautiful fabric, reared by our 
forefathers, cemented by their blood, and bequeathed to us as a precious 
inheritance." 

The disruption of the "Whig party, occasioned by the shivery 
question, induced many of the Soutliern "Wliigs to unite with the 
Democracy, as the only party professing national principles, that 
gave evidence of ability to cope with the new enemy. In attach- 
ing themselves to their former political rival, they in no wise 
compromised their early principles, for the old Whig and Demo- 
cratic parties equally favored the constitutional rights of all 
sections of the Union, in the States as well as in the national 
Territories. A small portion of the Northern Anti-Slavery 
Democrats had united with the Republicans ; but the large body 
of the party in that section remained attached to the old prin- 
ciples of a former period. The Democracy of all the States 
having met in convention at Cincinnatti, June 2d, 1856, re- 
affirmed the ancient doctrines of the party on the slavery ques- 
tion ; and besides, 'announced their recognition of the principles 
embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. James Buchanan and 
John C. Breckenridge were next placed in nomination for Presi- 
dent and Yice-President of the United States. 

A small portion of the Whig party, North and South, united 
in the nomination of Millard Fillmore and Andrew J. Donald- 
son for the Presidency and Yice-Presidency. This movement 
being entirely the product of attachment to the old organization 
of Clay and Webster, gave no evidence of any ability to coun- 
teract the dangerous principles which it assumed to oppose. The 
Democratic party was the only one that possessed the semblance 
of ability to defeat the sectional Eepublican organization of the 
North. Patriotism would have demanded that any sacrifice 
should be made for the welfare of the country ; but party spirit 
interposed. This spirit, regardless of constitutional guarantees, 
had organized the Republican party upon a basis of sectionalism 
that arrayed one-half of the Union against the other. Ambitious 
leaders, destitute of political principle, flocked to the rising party, 
who could not but see that the success of the new principles 
would entail civil war upon the country or a dissolution of the 
Union. The want of principle in party leaders w^as at this 



176 A REVIEW OF THE 

time apparent upon all sides ; and to this cause was it mainly 
owing that sectional organizations were permitted to obtain a 
dangerous control in the nation. 

But the result of the campaign of 1856 was one more 
triumph of national principles and the election of the Presidential 
candidates of the Democratic party. Sectionalism was simply 
stayed by this victory, but by no means overthrown. The ban- 
ner of abolitionism waved in triumph over eleven States of the 
l!^orth ; and the powerful vote indicated to a certainty the suc- 
cess of Republican principles in the near future. Southern states- 
men now clearly perceived that their institution was doomed so 
soon as l^orthern ideas would obtain permanent control of the 
General Government. The antagonism of the North to slavery 
had produced its counterpart in the South, which had become a 
unit in defense of their inherited rights. In Southern estimation, 
therefore, the election of Buchanan and Breckenridge simply 
granted a respite of four years to the Constitutional Republic. 

James Buchanan was inaugurated President of the United 
States, March 4th, 1857. Shortly after his elevation to the 
highest seat in the gift of the people, the Sujft-eme Court in the 
Dred Scott case, announced the important decision that the Mis- 
souri Compromise had been an unconstitutional act of Federal 
legislation ; that slavery existed in all the Territories by virtue of 
the Constitution ; and that neither Congress nor a Territorial 
Legislatul-e could terminate its legal existence. It was only the 
people of a Territory, when forming a Constitution, who were 
competent to determine whether slavery should exist or not, in 
the new State. This decision of the highest judicial tribunal of 
the nation, affinned the doctrine on the slavery question, that had 
always been held by the South, and also by the Democratic and 
"Whig parties ; and that which was the dictate of reason and of a 
sound and enlightened public policy. 

The people of Kansas had detennined in the regular Territorial 
Legislature, to call a convention for the purpose of forming a State 
Constitution. Accordingly on the 20th of May, 185Y, F. P. 
Stanton, then acting Governor of the Territory, published his 
proclamation commanding the proper officers to hold an election 
on the third Monday cf June, 1857, for the choice of members 
to this Convention, as the Act of the Legislature directed. The 
election was legally held as directed, and the Convention assembled 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 177 

at Lecompton, according to law, on the first Monday of tlie follow- 
ing September. Having framed a Constitution, tlie Convention 
adjourned on the Yth of JSTovember, 1857. Only that clause of 
the Constitution respecting slavery, which seemed to be the 
principle question in dispute between the parties in the Territory, 
was directed by the Convention to be submitted to a vote of the 
people for ratification or rejection. This submission took place 
on December 21st. The Free State men, having chiefly absented 
themselves from the polls, the vote resulted as follows : For the 
Constitution, with slaver}^, 6,226 ; for the Constitution, without 
slavery, 567. By the new Constitution it was directed, that an 
election should be held on the 4th of January, 1858, for a Gov- 
ernor, Lieutenant-Governor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer, 
Members of the Legislature, and also a Member of Congress. 

At the election held in October, 1857, the Free State party 
participated, and the result was that a Territorial Legisla- 
ture of their selection was chosen, and also a Delegate to Con- 
gress. Acting Governor Stanton convened, by proclamation, an 
extra seSiSion of the Free State Legislature, for which act he was 
removed from office by the President, and Governor Denver 
appointed in his stead. The Territorial Legislature, when 
assembled in extraordinary session, also authorized an election to 
be held on the -Ith of January, 1858, at which the Lecompton 
Constitution should be submitted de novo, to a popular vote of 
the people of Kansas, for acceptance or rejection. Of this elec- 
tion, ordered by the Territorial Legislature, James Buchanan, in 
in his Message of February 2d, 1858, said : 

" This election was held after the Territory had been prepared for admis- 
sion into the Union, as a Sovereign State, and when no authority existed 
in the Territorial Legislature, which could possibly destroy its existence 
or change its character." 

The election ordering the Lecompton Constitution to a txqvt 
vote of the people, resulted in its repudiation by over ten thou- 
sand majority. The Pro-Slavery party declined to vote, inas- 
much as they contended that the Constitution had been already 
submitted in a legal manner, and, consequently, adopted. But 
both parties participated on the same day in the general election 
appointed as before stated in the Lecompton Constitution, and the 
result was a great triumph for the Free State party. The Anti- 



178 A REVIEW OF THE 

Slavery men were thus placed in the ascendant, and the iDolitical 
power of the Territory was in their hands. 

Afterwards, on the 30th of January, President Buchanan 
received a copy of the Lecompton Constitution, with a request 
from the President of the Convention that it might be submitted 
to the consideration of Congress. This was done by the Presi- 
dent, in his Message of February 2d, 1858, in which he recom- 
mended the admission of Kansas, and the termination of the 
pending territorial difficulty. He urged the admission of Kansas 
because its Constitution had been adopted in a regular and formal 
manner ; and, although the one party had declined to vote either 
for the election of delegates to the Convention, or on the 
question of slavery, when the same was submitted to the people 
for adoption or rejection ; this, in his opinion, was no reason why 
the Constitution as adopted was not valid. Mr. Buchanan further 
contended in his Message, that no other course would so speedily 
terminate the slavery agitation as the admission of the new State ; 
and he also showed, that the people of Kansas had it in their 
own power immediately to take steps for changing their Consti- 
tution and abolishing slavery if the majority of the citizens so 
desired. In this Message he said : 

" The people of Kansas have in their own way and in strict accordance 
with the Organic Act, formed a Constitution and State Government ; 
have submitted the all-important question of slavery to the people, and 
have elected a Governor, a Member to represent them in Congress, Mem- 
bers of the State Legislature, and other State officers. * * * 
For my own part I am decidedly in favor of its admission, and thus 
terminating the Kansas question."* 

" This message occasioned a long, exciting and violent debate 
in both Plouses of Congress, between the Slavery and Anti- 
Slavery members, which lasted nearly three months. It was but 
the re-echo of the storm that was raging throughout the land. 
Mr. Buchanan was bitterly denounced as truckling to the slave 
power, and as lending the weight of his high office towards fixing 
upon the people of Kansas the curse of slavery against then- will. 
Members of Congress were classified during this controversy as 
Lecompton and Anti-Lecompton, as they favored or opposed the 
admission of Kansas. A wing of his own party separated from 
Mr. Buchanan on this point, and among these Stephen A. Doui - 
las, of Illinois. Kansas was not admitted under the Lecompton 

^Buchanan's Administration, ]). 43. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 179 

Constitution and was only admitted a short time before tLe close 
of Mr, Buchanan's administration, with a Free Constitution,"* 

During the administration, of James Buchanan, a permanent 
schism developed itself in the Democratic party, which rendered 
the triumph of Kepublicanism in the next Presidential election 
almost a certainty. The discord which rent the old party of 
Jefferson, was itself produced by Anti-Slavery agitation ; and 
emanated from the conflicting opinions that existed as to the 
power of the j)eople of a territory to legislate concerning slavery 
whilst in a territorial condition. In the year 1S47, Cen. Cass, 
in his celebrated Nicholson letter, had given utterance to senti- 
ments that seemed to imply such power in the inhabitants of a 
Territory ; and from this period the question Avas more or less 
discussed in Congress and in the public journals. The great 
object of the leading statesmen at that time appeared ^o be the 
removal of the question of slavery from the Halls of Congress 
and leaving it with the people, who were themselves directly 
interested in it. It soon became evident that Southern Demo- 
crats viewed the doctrine of squatter sovereignty, as an innova- 
tion upon the ancient creed ; and from its earliest advocacy they 
determined to resist its incorporation into the platform of the 
party. In 1854 the Richmond Inquirer, speaking of General 
Cass, said : 

" The concerted efforts of the Washington Union and other journals in 
his interest, to run him a second time (for President) and incorporate 
squatter sovereignty into the Democratic creed, will pi-ovoke a resistance 
which may possibly end in a disruption of the party," 

That Gen, Cass had been rightly understood as favoring the 
disputed doctrine, seems clear from remarks made by him in the 
Senate in May, 1856, as follows : 

*' He held, however, that a ter Congress had enabled a Territory to 
assume legislative powers, it was not competent for Congress to restrain 
any legislative act of such Territorial Government under the Constitu- 
tion of the United States ; and amongst such acts he held the admission 
or exclusion of slavery. This was a necessary deduction of popular sov- 
ereignty."f 

The Cincinnati Convention of the Democratic party in 1856, 
did not determine in its platform the disputed question as regards 
the power of a Territorial Legislatiu-e, but left it for future 
decision. James Buchanan, speaking of this convention, says; 

*Harris' Biographical History of Lancaster County, p. 108, 
^National IiUelligencer, May 13th, 1856. 



ISO A REVIEW OF THE 

*' It is altogether silent in regard to the power of a Territorial Legisla- 
ture over the question of slavery. Nay, more ; w^hilst affirming in 
general terms the provisions of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, it specifica'ly 
designates a future time when slavery may be rightly dissolved, not by 
the Territorial Legislature but by the people. This is when ' acting 
through the legally and fairly expressed will of a majority of actual resi- 
dents, and whenever thenumherof their inhabitants justifies it {they assem- 
ble), to form a Constitution, with or loithout domestic slavery, and be 
admitted into the Union upon terms of perfect eqality with the other 
States.'' Before this period the Cincinnati platform is silent on the sub- 
ject."* 

The Congressional struggle over the Lecompton Constitution 
was potential in widening the breach that already existed in the 
Democratic party. Stephen A. Douglas, in view of the Anti- 
Slavery storm that had been prostrating the ancient structures of 
his party, deemed it necessary to find refuge for his own safety 
in some of the modern edifices that were rearino- their domes 
around him. The contest for the admission of Kansas oifered 
the Illinois Senator an admirable opportunity to redeem his sm- 
stained head from the imj)ending destruction with which he was 
menaced by the Anti-Slavery spirit of the N'orth. He had seen 
the terrific overthrow which the Democracy suffered in 1854, and 
even had witnessed by his side the fall of his Senatorial colleague ; 
and all this the product of his own conjuration in the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise. He must make peace with the aroused 
demon, and obtain atonement for the deeds of the past. In 
uniting with his former enemies in opposing the admission of 
Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution, Senator Douglas 
hoped again to so re-instate himself in Northern- confidence as to 
assure his return to the United States Senate in 1859. Some of 
the high priests of Eepublicanism were ready to clothe him with 
sacred robes for his able defense of their cause. Horace Greeley 
says : 

" It seemed to me that not only magnanimity but policy dictated to 
the Republicans of Illinois that they should promptly and heartily tender 
their support to Mr. Douglas, and thus insure his re-election for a third 
term with substantial unanimity." f 

This opposition of Senator Douglas and his friends to the 
admission of Kansas, proved the entering wedge that distracted 
the National Democratic party. But it was in the famous Illi- 
nois contest which took place between Stephen A. Douglas and 

^Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion, p. 55, 
t Greeley's Recollections, p. 357. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 181 

AbraLam Lincoln, that the former revealed himself as the politi- 
cian, who sought to secure his election at the risk of disrupting 
that party, to which he was indebted for all his substantial honors, 
and upon whose harmony the union of the States perhapS de- 
pended. Although as touching the slavery controversy he had 
obligated himself to acquiesce in the decision of the Supreme 
Court, yet when this was rendered in 1857, he, with the Republi- 
cans, strove to evade its effect, in his pandering to the abolition 
sentiment of the Northern masses. He declared in his Illinois 
speeches, that it was within the power of any Territorial Legis- 
lature, by a species of " unfriendly legislation," to exclude slavery 
from the new Territories — and though conceding the Supreme 
Court to have declared that the Constitution carried slavery into 
all the public domain, and that neither Congress nor a Territorial 
Legislature were authorized to exclude it — ^yet Senator Douglas 
argued that it could not exist, unless certain favoring enactments 
of the Legislature were passed for its protection. In this manner 
he endeavored to conciliate the Anti-Slavery opposition of his 
State, and to show that his attitude was equally antagonistic to 
slavery extension as that of the Kepublican party. 

Such subterfuges of the politician, however, are miserable to 
contemplate. "What a death of demoralization does the position of 
Senator Douglas assume ? His plan for excluding slavery from 
the Territories pre-supposed that every Territorial legislator was 
ready to perjure himself in order to accomplish his political schemes. 
Does not every legislator swear to support the Constitution of 
the United States ? How then could the legislator, who believed 
with Senator Douglas, that the Constitution guarantees the right 
to hold slaves in the Federal Territories, free himself from his 
oath, unless he favored such legislation as would enable the slave- 
holder to enjoy his property after transporting it to his new 
settlement ? Does an oath to obey the Constitution, permit a 
legislator to support laws violative of rights established by that 
National compact ? Is he a supporter of the Constitution, who, 
knowing or believing there is a right establisjied under it needing 
specific legislation, would refuse the required enactments ? Would 
he not, by such refusal, violate the solemn oath he had taken to 
support the Constitution ? And yet such " unfriendly legislation," 
received the approbation of Senator Douglas. He would have 
the members of a Territorial Legislature, who were sworn to sup- 



183 A REVIEW OF THE 

port tlie guarantees of the Constitution, and wliicli tliey tliemselves 
accepted as genuine, assist in legislation intended to defeat those 
rights. This was, in plain words, to counsel the repudiation of 
legislative obligations. It is not surprising that the period of 
political corruption had fully set in, when a prominent leader of 
one of the great American parties could be guilty of such a breach 
of moral conviction ; and yet at the same time, not alienate from 
him his partisan followers. 

If the principles of the Democratic party were wrong, neither 
Senator Douglas,, nor any other man, should have advocated 
them ; but if right, as he professed, then it was his duty to bat- 
tle for them before a corrupted public opinion, even if he must 
fall in the contest. The Kepublicans challenged the truths of 
the Democratic doctrines ; resisted openly the extension of slavery 
into the Territories ; and planted themselves in opposition to the 
former principles upon which the Government from its origin 
had been conducted. In the estimation of all men of clear per- 
ception, they were the revolutionists who strove for the over- 
throw of the old social status and the inauguration of a new one. 
But, Stephen A. Douglasj and his followers avowed themselves 
as Democrats; as friends of the existing order of government 
and its institutions ; and yet they did nothing to avert the revo- 
Intion which was threatening the country. Instead of presenting 
themselves as a breakwater to the flood that was rising, they 
simply added the squatter sovereignty current as a cumulative 
force to the deluge, and permitted it, unobstructed, to beat with 
still greater impetuosity against all the landmarks of ancient 
order and constitutional guarantee. The Illinois Senator was 
therefore no true man for the crisis. lie was the sunshine patriot 
whose voice was loudest when prosperity covered with her wings 
the party to which he was attached ; but when adversity ad- 
vanced, the ingrate was soon found a deserter in the enemy's 
ranks. 

But besides all this, the Congressional struggle over the Le- 
comptou Constitution, added new strength, as was anticipated, 
to the Republican revolutionists of the North; and the election 
of 1 S5S resulted for them in another triumph. Thaddeus Stevens 
was in this year returned from Lancaster County to the 36th 
Congress, which assembled on Monday, December 5th, 1859. He 
again took his seat in that body, of which he continued a member 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 1S3 

during the remainder of his hfe, a period of the most eventful 
interest in his own and the history of the Repubhc. The ele- 
ments of discord were at no former time so threatening, as at 
the opening of this Congress. The country had but just recov- 
ered from the shock produced by the raid into Virginia, led by 
the fanatical John Brown and his deluded followers. In the 
opinion of every reflecting man, a crisis was near at htisd. The 
portents indicating such were visible on all sides. The whole 
period of James Buchanan's administration up to this moment, 
was like a diseased body, oner pustule appearing after another, 
indicating the putrefying condition of the wdiole. The Southern 
mind was highly alarmed with the state of affairs, and unity of 
interest had cemented their States into an attitude of resistance 
to ISTorthern sectionalism. The Republican nominee for Speaker 
of the House, was John Sherman, of Ohio, who had made himself 
especially odious to the South, by publicly recommending in con- 
nexion with sixty-eight other members of Congress, a document 
called "Helper's Book," the doctrines of which were of the 
most fanatical and revolutionary character. But political mad- 
ness and insanity ruled the hour ; and although the entire South- 
ern delegation gave v/arning that they would regard the election 
of Sherman, or any other man with his record, as an oj^en declar- 
ation of w^ar against the South, the Eepublican revolutionists 
defiantly continued to vote for him for nearly two months, giving 
him a majority lacking but a few votes upon every trial of his 
strength." He was finally withdrawn and Wilham Pennington, 
fK)m ISTew Jersey, a member of the same party, was elected. 

The Republican party, openly pledged to oppose slavery ex- 
tension, was already dominant in the ISTorthern States. The 
Douglas Democracy of the ISTorth also advocated sentiments that 
in Southern estimation would circumscribe slavery wdthin its 
present bounds; indeed, this was the secret of their reception 
amongst that wing of the party, tinctured with anti-slavery views. 
The anti-slavery agitation had raged with such intensity, and for 
so long a period, that the ISTorthern people were seduced by 
the arguments of the Abolitionists into the belief that slavery 
was a great social and moral evil, and repugnant to the instincts 
of a refined humanity. But few remained unconverted to the 



*Pollard's First Year of the War, pp. 29. 



184 A REVIEW OF THE 

sentiment of the abolition reform, save those who were compe- 
tent to think and reason for themselves. The leading intellects 
of the South were not slow in detecting the state of l^ortheru 
opinion npon the slavery question ; a vigilant statesman of the 
South took occasion to denounce the Douglas^ defection as " a 
short cut to all ends of Black Republicanism/' Whilst the 
"Helper Book" controversy was agitating the country, one of 
the Georgia Senators was so bold as to denounce, in his place in 
Congress, the entire Democratic ;farty of the North as unreliable 
and rotten. 

Jefferson Davis, on the 2d day of February, 1860, offered in 
the Senate a series of resolutions, expressive of Southern opin- 
ions, as regards the relation of the States of the Union, and the 
power of Congress, or of a Territorial Legislature over slavery in 
the Federal Territories. The resolution defining the Democratic 
position on the slavery question, denied to Congress or a Terri- 
torial Legislature the power " to annul or impair the Constitu- 
tional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave 
property into the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy 
the same while the territorial condition remains." These reso- 
hitions were adopted in the Senate by nearly a two-thirds vote ; 
the Republicans, however, opposed their passage with unanimity 
as conflicting with the j)i"inciples of their party. 

The States Right party of the South had in 1856 at Cincinnati, 
united with the Northern Democracy upon a platform of princi- 
ples which received different interpretations in the two sections. 
In the North it was believed by one wing of the party (the fol- 
lowers of Douglas ) to express the doctrine of popular sov- 
ereignty for the government of the Territories ; and in the 
South a contrary interpretation obtained. The popular sover- 
eignty doctrine of the North claimed for the people of a Terri- 
tory, the right to determine the slavery question for themselves. 
Those favoring this view, asserted that this was the principle 
established by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This assertion James 
Buchanan refutes in the following language : 

♦* If the Douglas', construction of the act be correct, it is morally cer- 
tain that the Southern Senators and Representatives who were warm 
advocates of its passage, could not possibly have so understood it. If 
they had, they would then have voluntarily voted away the rights of 
their constituents. Indeed, such a construction of the act would be 
more destructive to the interests of the slaveholders than the Republican 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 185 

doctrine of Congressional exclusion. Better, far better, for him to sub- 
mit the question to Congress, where he could be deliberately heard by 
liis representatives, than to be deprived of his slaves after he had gone 
to the trouble and expense of exporting them to a Territory, by a hasty 
enactment of a Territorial Legislature, elected annually, and freed from 
all constitutional restraints. Such a construction of the Kansas-Nebraska 
Act would be in direct opposition to the policy and practice of the Gov- 
ernment from its origin. The men who framed and built up our institu- 
tions, so far from regarding the Territories to be sovereign, treated them 
as mere wards of the Federal Government. * * * It was not 
then foreseen that any political party would arise in this country claim- 
ing the right for the majority of the first settlers of a Territory, under 
the plea of popular sovereignty, to confiscate the property of the 
minority. When the population of the Territories had reached a certain 
number. Congress admitted theai as States into the Union, under the 
Constitution framed by themselves, with or without slavery, accordino- 
to their own discretion."* 

The dual Democratic interpretation obtained, regarding that part 
of the Cincinnati platform, which adopted the principles of the 
Kansas-lSTebraska Act ; and it was agreed amongst the leaders of 
the party that the subject should be referred to the Supreme 
Court for adjudication. But when the Dred Scott decision was 
promulgated, so violent was the clamor which was raised against 
it by the revolutionary Eepublican party, that Stephen A. Douo-- 
las and those agreeing with him in sentiment, were intimidated 
from that defense of it, of which the high character of the 
Court should have rendered it worthy. And, even though some 
of the principles decided might strictly not have been before 
the Court, yet they disclosed what the judges regarded as law 
and were indicative of what would be affirmed when the point 
in technical accuracy might arise. In this view of the question 
the Dred Scott decision was a positive affirmance of the Southern 
interpretation of the Cincinnati platform. In this decision all 
Democrats, both North and South, should willingly have acciui- 
esced ; it was only for that party to dispute it whose principles 
of policy were based upon the doctrine that no law or decision 
of any court could justif}^ the existence of Slavery in the States, 
and much less its extension into the Territorial domain. Sup- 
ported by the decision of the highest Federal Court; by the 
unanimous opinion of their own section and a respectable portion 
of the ISTorthern Democracy ; and also in the historical practice 
of the country as regards the manner of governing the Territo- 

'■•Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion, pp. 54-5. 



180 A REVIEW OF THE 

lies, the Southern people determined to insist upon their rights 
and defend their honor as integral members of the Confederacy. 
In view of the assembling of the Democratic party for the pur- 
pose of nominating candidates for President and Vice-President, 
the people of several of the Southarn States defined the condi- 
tions upon Avhich their delegates should hold seats in the National 
Convention, appointed to meet at Charleston, April 23d, 18G0. 
The Democracy of Alabama was tirst to move in this direction. 
A series of resolutions were passed, affirming the Southern doc- 
trine that neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature were 
authorized to interfere with Shivery in the Federal Territories ; 
and also directing their delegates to see that these principles be 
incorporated as part of the ISTational Democratic creed, or that 
they retire from the convention. Similar resolves formed the 
credentials of the delegates from other Southern States. 

The Democratic Convention which assembled at Charleston, 
was composed of discordant elements, representing the unharmo- 
nious condition of the only remaining organization that formed a 
tie between the l^orthern and Southern portions of the American 
Union. The Democracy now met as did the old "Whig party in 
1S52, when nothing remaiaed of it save the name; for as to 
principles, a full separation had taken place between its antago- 
nistic sections. It was soon apparent that the party would be 
unable to harmonize upon a platform of principles satisfactory to 
both divisions of the Union ; and this because such a spirit of 
compromise was wanting as the exigency of the hour would have 
demanded. Patriotism required that the Democrats of the North 
should meet their brethren of the South in fraternal amity, and 
accord them in a public platform of principles the recognition of 
those rights which the Constitution guaranteed. This was all 
they demanded, and whilst the constitutional compact endured, 
equity suggested the fulfillment of its stipulations. The revolu- 
tionists were in serried array ; the alarming decree had gone 
forth that the will of the majority must triumph, and that the 
accorded rights of the minority must yield ; and yet the Demo- 
crats of the North stood stubbornly upon a principle in which it 
was impossible for the South, as she conceived, to acquiesce 
without a sacrifice of her honor as a member of an equal Con- 
federation. After the convention had been in session for several 
days, the South was out-voted in the adoption of the j)latform ; 



rOLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. 137 

and tliis iiltimjited in tlie disruption of tlie assemblage by the 
withdrawal of the cotton States ; and an adjournment to Balti- 
more followed. The border Slave States still remained in the 
convention in the hope of effecting some ultimate settlement of 
the difficulty. But the breach, instead of being closed, widened. 
The re-assembling of the convention at Baltimore resulted in a 
hnal and embittered separation of the opposing delegates. The 
majority still clinging with uncompromising tenacity to their 
position ; Yirginia and the other border States, except Missouri, 
withdrew from the convention and united with the representa- 
tives from the cotton States, then assembled at Baltimore, in the 
nomination of candidates representing their views. A portion 
of the Northern delegates also retired from the convention and 
united with them. Their nominees were John C. Breckenridge, 
of Kentucky, for President, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon, for 
Yice-President. The l^orthern Democracy placed in nomina- 
tion Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, for President, and Herschel 
Y. Johnson, of Georgia, for Yice-President 

The Constitutional Union party, being the remnant of the old 
Whig and American organizations, met in Baltimore May 9th, 
18G0, and nominated for President and Yice-President, John 
Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts. The 
platform of this party was a vague and undefined enumeration 
of their politcal principles summed up in the following words : 

" The Constitution of the countiy, the union of the States, and the 
enforcement of the laws." 

The Democracy was at length sundered, the AYhig party was 
virtually defunct, and nothing seemed now able to interpose 
resistance to the triumphant march of the revolutionists to victory. 
This party met in Chicago in June, 1860, and placed Abraliam 
Lincoln, of Illinois, in nomination for the Presidency, and Han- 
nibal Hamlin, of Maine, for the Yice-Presidency, and at the same 
time adopted a platform declaring freedom to the normal condi- 
tion of the Territories. Sectionalism had now chosen its cap- 
tains for its last struggle with the principles of representative 
democratic government. Its Anti-Slaveiy and ^Non-Compro- 
mise banners floatecj, over the hastily constructed wigwam in 
which the leaders had assembled, and the nominations as made 
were received with an eclat which seemed to portend triumph as 
about to crown their standaj-ds. But reason w^as lost sight of m. 



1S8 A REVIEW OF THE 

an assembly, wliicli was intoxicated witli tlie contemplation of 
negro emancipation upon the Western continent. 

The weakness and incapacity of men for self-government was 
fully exemplified in the campaign of 1860. The people of both 
sections of the country, in opposition to the admonitions of the 
framers and ancient patriots of the American Kepublic, permitted 
themselves to be seduced by false leaders into a hostility of sections, 
which could not but carry with it revolution and constitutional 
overthrow. Party success and partisan triumph, were the motives 
of the politicians in a campaign which, of all others, should have 
produced instances of pui-e disinterestedness and patriotic self- 
devotion. But the contrary was everywhere apparent. Men 
adiiered to their p^arties, although in doing so, they were con- 
sciously adding firebrands to the Federal Republic, soon to be 
ignited in the flames of civil convulsion. The campaign resulted 
as all reflecting men must have anticipated, in the election of the 
revolutionary candidates, Lincoln and Hamlin. Republicanism, 
save in Kew Jersey, triumphed throughout the entire l^orth. 
Sectional antagonism, which an Anti-Slavery agitation of many 
years liad been preparing, was at length fully complete. Destiny, 
however, had in store for the American people the fruits of ofli- 
cious interference and impolitic reform- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 1S9 



CHAPTER XIL 

SECESSION OF THE SOUTHEEN STATES, AND THE EFFORTS AT COMPROmSE, 

The Southern people correctlj interpreted the import of 
Northern ascendency in the election of Lincoln and Hamlin, on 
the 6th of I^ovember, 1860. The composition of the Republican 
party, the utterances of its orators and press, and the resolves 
of its conventions, left no doubt as to the animus of the organi- 
zation, m.uch as this, for political reasons, might be concealed. 
The most violent Abolitionists of the IS^orth were the most ardent 
champions of the new combination, and the entrusted chiefs in 
all party manipulations, provided they displayed sufficient saga- 
city as not to disclose the esoteric doctrines of the initiated. The 
enunciated principles of simple opposition to the' extension of 
slaveiy, were far from being those which raised the enthusiasm of 
the sincere Abolitionists, and attracted them to the standards of 
Republicanism, The same secret which attached to the risin«- 
party, the enemies of slavery, aroused the friends of the institu- 
tion, and, as it were, admonished them of the adder in the 
grass, whose poison was to be avoided. This antagonism resulted 
from the existence of slavery in the Southern States, and althouo-h 
the Republicans avowed no intention to interfere with the insti- 
tution where it existed, yet this addition to the creed was simply 
a matter of time, and the education of JSTorthem public opinion. 

Southern institutions were doomed to a slxort existence under 
the Federal Government in the hands of the Republican party. 
This, leading statesmen of the South had often predicted, should 
ISlorthern sectionalism succeed in gaining control of national 
affairs. It had been determined ^ therefore, by the controlling 
minds in the slave States, that if their constitutional rights were 
to be preserved, resistance would become necessary when a sec- 
tional party should come into power with principles known to be 
violative of the guarantees of the Federal compact. In the 



IDO A REVIEW OF THE 

election of Abraham Lincoln, as tliey conceived, that period had 
at length arrived. The predictions of Calhoun, Clay, and other 
leading statesmen of the Sonth were verified ; Northern Aboli- 
tionism, nnder the false name of Republicanism, had triumphed; 
and the Southern people would simply be conceded such rights 
as the new rulers would see proper to accord. The only question 
in the South, was the remedy to be adopted, in view of Northern 
ascendency upon a basis of hostility to their institutions, 

A number of prominent South Carolinians had met on the 
S5th of October, 1860, and had determined nj)on the secession 
of their State, in case the Republican party, as was anticipated, 
should triumph in the pending cam]3aign. This determination 
of the influential men of the Palmetto State, was shared very 
generally by the controllers of public opinion in the remainder 
•of the cotton States. The Legislature of South Carolina, being 
convened by Gov. Gist, on Monday, November 6th, the day 
before the Presidential election, for the purpose of choosing 
electors ; the State politicians had an opportunity of perfecting 
tlieir plans, should Republicanism in the North triumph. The 
Governor, in his proclamation, and other prominent men of the 
State, who were serenaded on the evening of the 6th, exj)ressed 
the opinion that in the event of Abraham Lincoln being chosen 
President of the United States, duty demanded that South Caro- 
lina should inaugurate the movement of separation from the 
Union ^ and set in motion the ball of resistance to the Northern 
despotism. 

The morning of the 7th of November, 1860, announced to 
the people of the South the unwelcome news that the hated party 
of the North had won its crowning victory, Abraham Lincoln 
and Hannibal Hamlin were elected to the highest offices in the 
gift of the people ; and by a party pledged in its platform to 
prohibit Slavery extension ; and animated with the resolve to 
weaken the institution at all points, and ultimately effect its 
entire extinction. William H. Seward, the life and soul of the 
Republican party in 1848, thus spoke at Cleveland: 

*"' Correct your own error that Slavery has any constitutional guaran- 
tees which may r-ot be released, and ought not to be relinquished. Say 
to Slavery, when it shows its bond (the Constitution) and demands its 
pound of flesh, that if it draws one drop of blood, its life shall pay the 
forfeit." * * * "Do all this and inculcate all this, in the spirit 
of moderation and benevolence, and not of retaliation and fanaticism. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 191 

and you will soon bring the parties of the country into an effective 
aggression upon slavery. * * * Slavery can be limited to 
its present bounds ; it can be ameliorated. It can be and must be abol- 
ished, and you and I can and must do it. The task is as simple and easy 
as^its consummation will be beneficent and its reward glorious." 

Heniy Wilson, another of the shining lights of Republicanism, 
expressed himself in the following manner : 

"We shall triumph in the end ; and we shall overtlirow the slave- 
power of the Republic ; we shall enthrone freedom ; we shall abolish 
slavery ; we shall change the Supreme Court of the United States, and 
place men in that Court who believe that our prayers wiU be impious to 
heaven while we sustain and support human slavery." 

The diabolical and fiendish principles of the Helper Book, 
which had been endorssd by 69 Republican members of Congress, 
could never be forgotten by the people of the Southern States. 
As soon, therefore, as the triumph of Abolitionism was made 
known, secession was very generally determined upon by Southern 
Statesmen as the remedy for evils which threatened thf overthrow 
of that form of Constitutional Government under which their 
States had prospered, and to which they were devotedly attached. 
The Legislature of South Carolina being at this time in session, 
joint resolves were passed in both Houses calling for the election 
of a convention on the 6th of December, and which should meet 
on the 17th of the same month, to take into consideration the 
question of separation from the Union. Steps leading in the same 
direction were taken throughout the whole section of the cotton 
States ; and the influential leaders in most of the remaining slave 
States prepared themselves so to act as the current of a united 
Southern sentiment might dictate. By general consent it seemed 
now recognized that the period had arrived which demanded har- 
mony of counsel amongst the slave States, in order that they 
might be able by united action to countervail JSTorthern section- 
alism, and defend their constitutional rights as equal members of 
the American Confederacy. 

The South Carolina Convention, assembled at Columbia, the 
Capitol of the State, on the day determined upon ; and on the 
20th of December, 1860, proceeded to pass by an unanimous vote 
an Ordinance of Secession, dissolving their connection Math the 
Federal Union. The secession of South Carolina was received 
by the dominant party in the North as a matter of light conse- 
quence ; as only another nullification affair which would scarcely 



193 A REVIEW OF THE 

create a ripple uj)oii tlie ocean of American life. Indeed, a 
studied system of deception had characterized the utterances of 
the organs of this party from its organization in 1854:. During 
the whole of the campaign of 1860, the declarations of JSTorthe^n 
and Southern Conservatives that the election of Abraham Lincoln 
would produce revolution and civil war, were scouted by the 
Kepublican orators and press, as simply election threats, intended 
to intimidate the dough faces of the ll^orth ; and that as soon as 
the election was over the Southern braggarts, as they were termed, 
would tame down as on former occasions. This system of de- 
ception was simply a part of the programme to enable the party 
to gain power. The objects to which they were leading the 
l^orthern people, and the dangerous course over which the passage 
led, must all be concealed from the eyes of the people, otherwise 
these were unattainable. The l^orthern masses were neithei 
prepared for the abolition of slavery, nor for civil war with tlieii 
countrymen of the South ; both of which were logical results oi 
the success of the Republican party. 

But the eyes of the Northern masses were partially opened as 
one after another of the cotton States followed in the wake o^ 
South Carolina secession. Mississippi was the first to imitate tlj 
example of the Palmetto State, and enrol herself under the ba]- 
ner of Southern resistance, having passed an ordinance of sece- 
sion January 9th, 1861. Florida buckled on the secession armir 
in defence of her inherited rights on the 10th of the sane 
month, and on the day following, Alabama was by her side n 
similar warlike array. On three successive days, these last nam3d 
States had in secession resolves, donned the martial outfit of 
Southern independence. Georgia, the old Empire State of tie 
South, was next to take her 'stand by the side of her resistmt 
sisters, and give character and weight to the movement of seces- 
sion. This she did January 19th, in an ordinance asserting ler 
State Sovereignty and independence of the Federal Government. 
Louisiana passed her act of secession January 25th, and on the 
1st of February the Lone Star of Texas was added to the fla^ of 
the Southern Confederacy. On the 4th of February, 1861, a 
Congress of Deleo^ates from the seven seceded States convened 
at Montgomery, the capitol of Alabama, adopted a Provisional 
Government, and elected Jefierson Davis, President of the Con- 
federate States. 



\. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 193 

The deception that had been practiced began to show its lining 
through the clouds, and as many as caught the glimpse broke in 
all directions. Horace Greelej, the leading Abolition editor of 

the ISTorth, says : 

" Every local election held during the two months succeeding our 
national triumph, showed great conservative gains. Conspicuous AboU- 
tionists were denied the use of public halls, or hooted down if they 
attempted to speak. Influential citizens, through meetings and letters, 
denounced the madness of fanaticism, and implored the South to stay 
her avenging arm until the North could have time to purge herself from 
complicity with fanatics, and demonstrate her fraternal sympathy with 
her Southern sister."* 

During all this period, the leading Republicans of Abolition 
faith exerted themselves to the utmost to turn the tide that had 
so strongly set in agaiiist them. The politicians, the journalists, 
and the infidel clergy of the North, had another difScult task to 
obscure the vision of the people and prevent them from seeing 
the yawning gulph of destruction to which they were conduct- 
ing them. They were made to believe by these wolves in sheep s 
clothing, that the South was only blustering in order to terrify 
the timid conservatives and enable them to ol;tain farther guar- 
antees for Slavery, Efforts at compromise were discouraged by 
them because, as they assured the people, such would be vain and 
useless. Sentences from the speeches of Southern men were 
perverted from their connection ; and these were made to utter 
sentiments which they never entertained. The papers teemed 
with the declarations of Clingman, Chestnut, Rhett, and other 
Southern statesmen, who were cited as asserting that no compro- 
mise would avail to arrest the revolution. But the reasons given 
by these men for believing and asserting that no compromise 
could heal the difficulties between the North and South, were 
carefully concealed from the Northern people. Had they told 
the whole story as it now stands revealed to history, and as 
shrewd men well understood at that time, such a demand for 
conciliation would, have gone up, as would have almost rent the 
whole Northern heavens, and have driven the leaders from a plat- 
form of discord, which admitted no entrance for the Angel of 
Peace ; but which was conducting the American people to the 
bloodiest chasm of civil war, that the annals of the world have 



* (jieeley's Recollections, p. 3£ 



104 A REVIEW OF THE 

ever recorded. It was the Chicago conclave that interposed and 
made harmony between the sections imj^ossible. It was the 
resolves of the Lake City Convention, in 1860, together with 
the knowledge of the designs of these men, that induced Southern 
statesmen to declare that secession could not be arrested. To show 
that the people were somewhat aroused to the alarming dangers 
to which the Republican party had brought the country, the fol- 
lowing Abolition testimony is submitted. Horace Greeley says : 

" In fact the attitude of the North during the two last months of 1860, 
was foreshadowed in four lines of Collins'' Ode to the Passions. * * * 
And the danger was immintnt that if a popular vote could have been had 
(as was proposed) on the Crittenden Compromise, it would have prevailed 
by an overwhelming majority. Very few Republicans would have voted 
for it ; but very many would have refrained from voting at all ; while 
their adversaries would have brought their every man to the polls in its 
support, and carried it by hundreds of thousands."* 

South Carolina and the other cotton States did not secede, as 
was averred by the Republican leaders, on account of any hos- 
tility to the Union, or the people of thelSTorth, but simply because 
they became fully rfatisiied that their rights were in jeopardy. 
Mutual interest had originally induced the people of the South 
to unite with those oi the North ; and while it was clear that it 
was to their advantage to remain in the Union, like all other 
people, they would do so. In the Union with their ISTorthern 
brethren they had grown wealthy and powerful ; and some valid 
reason existed to induce them to prefer a dissolution of the Union. 
The reason was no clearer to Southern than to liorthern appre- 
hension. It was the intermedling, fanatical disposition of the 
Abolitionists of the I^orth which induced them to interfere in the 
affairs of others, and assume to be the rulers over all America and 
her institutions. This in short was the lion in the way of an 
amicable settlement of the National troubles. A party existed 
coniined to the Northern States, whose doctrines were antagonistic 
to the interests of the Southern people ; this party was soon to 
obtain control of the Federal Government ; and as a consequence, 
the Union for them had no further attractions. Nations, as well 
as individuals, will ever seek such alliances as will redound, as 
they conceive, to their advantage. It was so in the case of the 
union of the States. But the long, bitter and intemperate Anti 
Slavery agitation, had antagonized the North into a sectional 

*Greeley's R3collect:o:is, pp. 396-7. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 195 

attitude against tlie South and her institutions; slavery was 
clearly seen to be jeoparded in a longer association with a people 
who could be seduced into such a hostile aggression against the 
rights and interests of another people over whom they had no 
legal control; and therefore, reason and common sense dictated a 
dissolution of a once friendly and happy alliance ; but which had 
now become dangerous and threatening to constitutional civil 
guarantees, and even to the perpetuity of free representative 
government itself. The men of the South would have been pol- 
troons and worthy the doom of slavery themselves, had they 
ignobly yielded to the dictation of Northern fanaticism; and 
tolerantly permitted the inauguration of a policy that in the end 
was sure to lead to the subversion of their constitutional rights. 

In the system of disimulation and decej)tion, by which the 
Republican leaders blindfolded the [Northern people in 1860 and 
1861, there was no one more adroit than Thaddeus Stevens in 
the use of such instruments as were required for the purpose ; and 
one who was able to distort Southern sentiment, and pervert it 
into the support of his own party position. An instance of this 
is seen in his speech in the House, delivered January 29th, 1861. 
lie said : 

" I regret, sir, that I am compelled to concur in the belief stated yes- 
terday by the gentleman from Virginia, (Mr. Pryor) that no compromise 
which can be made will have any effect in averting the present difficulty." * 

Mr Stevens fails to state in his speech (int«jnded for circulation 
in the IsTorthern journals of the Republican party f) what stood 
in the way of compromise ; but this is seen in the speech of Mr. 
Pryor, to which he refers. The latter, in his speech of January 
28th, spoke as follows : 

"Mn. Speaker, since the fatal 6th of November to the present hour, 
the Representatives of the South have invariably exhibited an accomo- 
dating disposition. The first day of our session was signalized by a 
proposition from a colleague of my own (Mr. Botteler), which contem- 
plated a imcific adjustment of our difficulties. A similar movement, 
likewise originating with a Southern man, was initiated in the Senate. 

'^Congressional Globe, p. 631, 

f Hence Hows one great evit of an unbridled press, which details all that 
is deemed favorable to the intests of party ; but the antidote is rarely 
pernutted to appe ir. Under such a system as now obtains wiJi most 
party organs in America, the truth is with the greatest difliculty ascer- 
tained, even by investigators, but rarely by the masses. Some method 
would seem necessary to be devised which would better secure the dis- 
semination of the truth than now exists. 



19G A REVIEW OF THE 

Meanwhile, various sohemes of settlement have been submitted in one oi 
the other Hoase of Congress, of which, without much regard to their 
intrinsic efficacy, we have uniformly avowed our support ; while on the 
other side (the Republican), they have been as uniformly rejected with 
a contemjituous disdain of compromise. Thus, while the South are will- 
ing to remain in the Union with an assurance of their rights, the North 
declare, by a refusal of all concession, that they will destroy the Union 
rather than renounce their aggressive designs. In the perverted patriot- 
ism of the dominant party, the Constitution of Washington is substituted 
by the platform of Lincoln ; and rather than be reproached with logical 
inconsistency, they chose to incur the guilt of civil war.'* 

Mr. Stevens, on the l-itli of February, 18G1, in replying to a 
Mr. Webster, of Maryland, who characterized his speech of 
January 29th as " a strong Anti-Compromise speech," admitted 
tliat inatead of being sorry, he "was gratilied that compromise 
could not save the Union. He said : " I did not agree to go for 
compromise. I am opposed to compromise until there is some- 
thing to compromise. "t 

Another illustration from the speech of Mr. Stevens of Janu- 
ary 29th, is cited as an example of the illogical and clap-trap 
method made use of by the Kepublican leaders to parry Southern 
argument in favor of compromise, and by sophistry also, to arouse 
JSlorthern pride and false patriotism against the people of the 
South. He spoke as follows : 

" When I see these States in open and declared rebellion against the 
Union, seizing vipon her public lands and arsenals, and robbing her of 
millions of the public property ; when I see the batteries of seceding 
States blockading the highway of the nation, and their armies in 
battle array against the flag of the Union ; when I see our flag insulted, 
and that insult submitted to, I have no hope that concession, humiliation 
and compi-omise can have any effect whatever..' % 

Such was the pabulum that fed Northern venom during the 
period when patriots North and South were engaged in the 
holy mission of endeavoring to adjust the national difficulties, 
and shield the Republic from bloodshed and fratricidal strife. 
Much more worthily would the powers of Mr. Stevens have been 
engaged, if in true republican spirit he had employed his intel- 
lectual abilities in logically controverting the positions of Southern 
statesmen, and convincing them, in the forum of reason, that their 
* rit^hts would be better secured in the Union than out of it. 



* Congressional Globe, p. 603, 
t Globe, p. 907. 
t Globe, p. 621, 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 121 

That was tlie method by which the Union had been framed, and 
by no other conld a repubhcan Union be perpetuated. Instead, 
therefore, of parading the iniquity of Southern secession, why 
did not he and his party endeavor to prove that the reasons which 
induced it were groundless ? The eloquent E.. A. Pryor, of 
Virginia, (against whom, as has been seen, Mr. Stevens in a 
measure replied) submitted a resume of the causes tliat induced 
the Southern revolt which deserved an argumentative rather than 
a bitter, sneering reply. After recapitulating the non-execution 
of the fugitive slave law by the ]S^orth, with many other viola- 
tions of Southern rights, Mr. Pryor said : 

" But the defence of the South rests upon still stronger grounds ; and 
her secession from the Confederacy is justified by even higlier principles 
than the right to vindicate a violated covenant. Absolute jjower is the 
essence of tyranny, whether the power be wielded by a monarch or a 
multitude. The dominant section in this Confederacy claims and exer- 
cises absolute power — power without limitation and without responsi- 
bility — without limitation, since all the restrictions of the Constitution 
are broken down, and without responsibility, because in the nature of 
things, the weaker interest cannot control the majority. Of all species 
of tyranny, the South is subject to the most intolerable. Under the 
rule of a despot we mLght hope something of his impartial indifference 
between the sections ; but to be exposed to the unbridled sway of a 
majority adverse in interest, inimical in feeling, and ambitious of domi- 
nation, is to be reduced to a condition more abject tlian that of tiie slaves 
whose emancipation is the pretext of all this controversy. 

'• It is against this sectional domination, this rule of the rnajority with- 
out law and without limit, — a rule asserted in subversion of the Con- 
stitution, and established on the ruins of the Confederacy, — it is in 
resistance to this despotic and destable rule that the people of the South 
have taken up arms. This, sir, is the cause of the South ; and tell me if 
cause more just ever consecrated revolution ? It is the cause of self-gov- 
ernment against the domination of foreign power — the very cause for 
which our fathers fought in 1 776. I repeat, it is against the nile of a 
sectional despotism that the South demands protection ; and it is to assert 
the cause of civil liberty that she declares her independence. You of the 
North lavished your sympathy on the people of Hungary in tlieir revolt 
against Austrian absolutism ; but our cause is identical, in principle and 
in purpose. 

" To-day, it is Southern interests which suffer from the overthrow of 
constitutional guarantees and the irresponsible reign of the majority. 
But the principle of absolute power, once ascendant in the Government, 
no interest is secure ; and circumstances will determine against what 
object it may be directed. The only safeguard of American liberty is in 
maintaining the integrity and preserving intact the limitations of the 
Government. For that the South contends; and all are alike concerned 
in her cause. 



198 A REVIEW OF THE 

"If, after the endurance of so many wrongs and the menace of others 
still more intolerable, were anything wanting to justify the South in the 
public opinion of the world, it would be supplied by jjer solicitude to 
avoid violence and redress her grievances Avithin the Union. We are 
reproached, I know, with precipitancy in not waiting an overt act of 
hostility from the sectional administration. Sir, in our judgment, a 
proclamation of war is an overt act, and such proclamation we find in 
the election by an exclusively sectional vote of a President pledged to 
put our rights and our property ' in course of ultimate extinction,'' — a 
President who admonishes us in advance of his aggressive designs by 
the sententious but significant declaration that ' tliey who deny freedom 
to others do not deserve it themselves, and under a just God cannot long 
retain it.' We could not agree to await, inactively, the development of 
the disposition of the President elect ; for we claim to hold our rights by 
'some higher and more solid tenure than the cai^ricious temper of any 
individual. Indeed, the arguments of our opponents involves a conces- 
sion of our case, inasmuch as it implies that the rights of the South are 
no longer secured by constitutional guarantees, but are susiDended on tlie 
accident of an unfriendly administration. 

''A more imperative consideration still determined the South to act at 
once and to act decisivel3^ If negotiation might avail, we thought to 
strengthen this by a demonstration of oiu* spirit. If the sword alono 
can reclaina oui' rights, we were resolved not to be unprepared for the 
issue."* 

The united South and the Democracy of the ISTorth were all 
in favor of an adjustment of the dispute between the sections, 
without recourse to coercive measures. Even a considerable wing 
of the Republican party wdiich had supported Lincoln for the 
Presidency, were likewise favorable to a peaceful solution of 
the national difficulties, in. order to avoid a collision of arms that 
would endanger the Federal Union, and might ultimate in a total 
overthrow of republican institutions. Influential men of both 
political parties, in view of Southern demonstrations, felt that a 
crisis had arisen, that called for the efforts of patriots to exert 
their influence to ward off the dangers with which the country 
was threatened. Meetings were held in different sections of the 
Korth for the purpose of giving expression to public opinion ; 
and also with the design of securing such a coincidence of senti- 
ment as might lead to an amicable termination of the troubles 
that were threatening the peace of the country. One of the 
largest of these assemblages was that held in Independence 
Square, in the City of Philadelphia, and which, by the advice of 
the councils, had been summoned by Mayor Henry to counsel 



*Glohe of 3d Session, 3Gth Congress, Vol. I, pp. C03-3. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 19S 

togetlier, in view of the appreliension that disunion was immi- 
nent, imless the " loyal people casting off tlie spirit of party, 
should in a special manner avow their unfailing fidelity to the 
Union, and their abiding faith in the Constitution and laws." 
This meeting — the spontaneous outburst of the purest patriotism 
that a people could exhibit — was of vast magnitude, and showed 
the interest that was felt by the masses who came in any wise to 
realize the maelstrom of civil war into which the Ship of State 
was rapidly descending. Addresses were made before this con- 
course of citizens by leading old line Whigs, Democrats and 
Conservative Republicans, evincing a desire of compromise ; and 
that fraternal concord might again be restored between the States 
and the Union perpetuated without bloodshed. It was a clear 
indication that the Northern people wished the Union to be pre- 
served by pacific remedies rather than risk its safety upon the 
hazard of the sword. But power had passed from the hands of 
those who desired that the Union should be perpetuated in the 
manner it had been formed. In compromise it? foundations had 
been laid ; in conciliation its structure had been reared ; but this 
policy must now yield to that which can terminate tlie career of 
Slavery and end its existence as one of the institutions of the 
American Republic. 

The second session of the Thirty-sixth Congress opened on 
Monday, December 3d, 1860, and President Buchanan on the 
next day transmitted to this body his fourth and last Annual 
Message. In this document, the President essayed the discussion 
of the national difficulties, and set forth as he believed the causes 
that had induced the troubles. lie said : 

*' Why is it then, that discontent now so extensively prevails, and the 
Union of the States, which is the source of all our blessings, is threatened 
with destruction? The long continued and intemperate interference of 
the Northern people with the question of slaveiy in the Southern States, 
has at length produced its natural effects. The different sections of the 
Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived so 
much dreaded by the Father of his country, when hostile geographical 
parties have b^.en formed. I have long foreseen and often forewarned 
my countrymen of the now impending danger. This does not proceed 
Bolely from the claims on the part of Congress or the Territorial Legisla- 
tures to exclude slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts of 
the different States to defeat the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law." 
In both the Senate and House of Representatives, committees 
were appointed to consider the state of the Union in view of the 



200 A REVIEW OF THE 

tlireatening aspect of national affairs. The Senate Committee, 
consisting of tliirteen members, was composed of the most dis- 
tinguislied Senators, representing the different parties to which 
thej belonged. It consisted of five leading Kepnblicans, the 
same number from the slave States, and three IvTorthern Demo- 
crats.'"' The latter were intended to act as mediators between the 
■extreme parties of the Committee. The Committee of the 
House consisted of tliirty-three members, one from each State, 
and was made np of sixteen Republicans, fifteen Southern men 
and two ISTorthern Democrats. Horace Greeley, speaking of this 
Committee, says: 

"Mr. Speaker Pennington, who formed tlie Committee, was strongly in" 
clined to conciliation, if that could be effected, on terms not dis,^racefui 
to the North ; and at least six of tlie sixteen Republicans placed on the 
Committee, desired and hoped that an adjustment might yet be achieved. 
No member of extreme Anti-Slavery views was associated with them."'t 

The Committee of the Senate first met December 21st, and 
preliminary to ftny other proceedings, they "resolved that no 
proposition shall be reported as adopted, unless sustained by a 
majority of each of the classes of the Committee ; Senators of 
the Republican party to constitute one class, and Senators of 
the other parties to constitute the other class." This resolution 
was adopted, because it was well-known that any report that 
might be submitted would be vain, unless sanctioned by at least 
a majority of Republican Senators. Few Southern men ever 
believed that these efforts at compromise would result in any 
amicable settlement of the difficulties between the sections ; but 
they were willing to co-operate in any measures that promised 
the least hope of warding off from the country the calamities of 
civil war. On the 22d of the same month, John J. Crittenden, 
of Kentucky, submitted to the Committee his proposed amend- 
ments to the Constitution, which became popularly known as the 
Crittenden Compromise. This was designed as a compromise of 
conflicting claims, inasmuch as it proposed that the South should 
surrender their adjudicated right to take slaves into all the Terri- 
tories, provided the I«[orth would concede this right in the Territory 



* The five Republicans of the Committee were Messrs. Seward, Colla- 
mer. Wade, Doolittle and Giimes ; the Southern Senators were Powell, 
Hunter, Crittenden, Toombs and Davis ; and the Northern Democrats, 
Douglas, Bigler and Bright. 

f Greeley's American Conflict.' Vol. 1, p. 373. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 201 

Eoutli of tlie old Missouri Compromise line. It was the accept- 
ance by the South of vastly less right in the Territories than she 
possessed under the decision of the Supreme Court, and showed 
Southern readiness to acquiesce in terms of reasonable compro- 
mise that might stay the flood-gates of civil outbreak between 
the States. 

Of the vast existing Territory, all was conceded to the Kurth 
by the jDroposition of Compromise, save New Mexico alone. And 
in regard to this section it was generally believed that it never 
could with profit be made a slave-holding State. At first it was 
thought by some thst this amendment would be yielded by the 
I^Torth as a peace offering to the South. It was in truth, but an 
offer to restore the Missouri Compromise, against the repeal of 
which the ^Northern Anti-Slavery men had struggled so fiercely 
in 1854. It was hailed throughout the country as the rainbow of 
peace, promising perpetuity to the Union. James Buchanan thus 
speaks of this measure : 

" Indeed, who could fail to believe that when the alternative was pre- 
sented to the Senators and Representatives of the Noi-thern States, either 
to yield to their brethren in the South, the barren abstraction of carrying 
their slaves into New Mexico, or to expose the country to the imminent 
peril of civil war, they would choose the side of peace and union ? The 
period for action was still propitious. It will be recollected that Mr. 
Crittenden's amendment was submitted before any of our forts had been 
seized, before any of the cotton States except South Carolina, had seceded, 
and before any of the conventions which had been caUed in the remain- 
ing six of these States had assembled. Under such circumstances it 
would have been true wisdom to seize the propitious moment before it 
fled forever, and even yield, if need be, a ti'ifling concession to patriotic 
policy, if not to abstract justice, rather than expose the country to a 
great impending calamity. And how small the concession required, even 
from a sincere Anti-Slavery Republican."* 

In advocacy of this Compromise, Mr. Crittenden used the fol- 
lowing language : 

" The sacrifice to be made for its (that of the Union) preservation is 
comparatively worthless. Peace, harmony and union in a great nation 
were never purchased at so cheap a rate, as we now have it in our power 
to do. It is a scruple only, a scruple of as little value as a barley corn 
that stands between us and peace, reconciliation and union ; and we 
stand here pausing and hesitating about that little atom which is to be 
sacrificed, "f 



*Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion, pp. 136-7. 
j[ Congressional Globe, 3d January, 1861, p. 237. 



203 A REVIEW OF THE 

As leading Soutliern statesmen however correctly apprehended, 
the Crittenden Compromise failed to receive the approbation of 
a single Republican member of the committee ; and therefore it 
could not have been reported to the Senate as adopted, according 
to the resolution which they had agreed upon, though all the 
other thirteen members had voted for it. But because of the 
unanimity of the Republican opposition, neither Jefferson Davis 
nor Robert H. Toombs would stultify themselves by supporting a 
measure in which they were willing to acquiesce, but which they 
w^ere satisfied the ruling party would not accept. In addition to 
this. Senator Davis, in view of the attitude of his State, had 
desired to be relieved from serving upon the committee when 
first named as a member of it. Senator Toombs, in his speech 
of January 9th, 1861, in enumerating the demands of the South, 
evinced that all he desired was a fair and honorable compromise, 
lie said : 

" We demand that the people of the United States shall have an equal 
right to emigrate to and settle in the present or any future acquired Ter- 
ritories, with whatever property they may possess (including slaves), and 
be securely protected in its peaceable enjoyment, until such Territory 
may be admitted as a State into the Union, with or without Slaverj', as 
she may determine, on an equality with all existing States. * * * 
We have demanded simply equality, security and tranquility. Give us 
these and peace restores itself. * * » But although I insist 
upon this perfect equality in the Territories, when it was proposed, as I 
understand the Senator from Kentucky, now proposes that the line of 
36°, 30', shall be extended, acknowledging and protecting our property 
on the south side of the line, for the sake of peace, permanent peace, I 
said to the Committee of Thirteen, as I say here, that with other satis- 
factory provisions I would accept it."* 

In addition to this, we have the testimony of Senator Douglas 
in his speech of January 3d, 1861, showing upon whom rested the 
responsibility of the failure to accept the Crittenden Compromise 
in the Committee of Thirteen. lie said : 

" If you of the Republican side are not willing to accept this [a propo- 
sition of adjustment offered by himself] nor the proposition of the Sena- 
tor from Kentucky (Mr. Crittenden's), pray, tell us what you are willing 
to do. I address the inquiry to the Republicans alone, for the reason 
that in the Committee of Thirteen, a few days ago, every member from 
the South, including those from the cotton States (Messrs. Davis and 
Toombs), expressed their readiness to accept the proposition of my ven- 
erable friend from Kentucky as a final settlement of the controversy, if 



^Congressional Globe, p. 308-70. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 20S 

tendered and sustained by the Republican members. Hence, the sole 
responsibility of our disagreement and the only difficulty in the w^ay of 
an amicable adjustment is with the Republican party.'* 

In his reply to Mr. Pugli, of Ohio, Senator Douglas re-affirmed 

his former statement. He said : 

*' The Senator has said, that if the Crittenden proposition could have been 
passed early in the session, it would have saved all the States except 
South Cai'olina. I firmly believe it would. While the Crittenden propo- 
sition was not in accordance wi.hmy cherished viev^s, I avowed my i-eadi- 
ness and eagerness to accept it, in order to save the Union, if we could 
unite upon it. No man has labored harder than I have to get it passed. 
I can confirm the Senators declai'ation that Senator Davis himself, when 
on the Committee of Thirteen, was ready at all times to compromise on 
the Crittenden proposition. I will go fui'ther, and say that Toombs was 
also ready to do so." f 

Although Mr. Crittenden's measure failed before the Committee 
of Thirteen, he did not despair of ultimate success with it. 
After this he could not expect to carry his compromise as an 
amendment to the Constitution, but believed it was possible to 
obtain a majority of each House in its favor so as to have it 
referred to a direct vote of the people of the States. He thought 
a portion of the Republican Members of Congress might be will- 
ing to favor a reference of the questions in dispute to the people 
themselves, as in this manner their j)arty could relieve itself from 
its former committals to the Chicago platform. Besides, he 
scarcely conceived it possible that they would be willing to 
assume the responsibility of denying to the people of the States 
an opportunity of expressing an opinion at the ballot-box, on 
questions involving no les^a stake than the peace and safety of 
the Union. It was quite nianifest to any one observing the cur- 
rent of public opinion at that time, that the people of perhaps 
every State but one were ready to accept the Crittenden Com- 
promise as a settlement of all difficulties between the Korth and 
South. Memorials in its favor poured into Congress from all 
sections of the jSlorth. One of these presented to the Senate was 
•from the Mayor, members of the Board of Aldermen and Com- 
mon Council of the City of Boston, and was signed by over 
2.2,000 citizens of the State of Massachusetts, praying the adop- 
tion of the Compromise measures proposed by Mr. Crittenden. 
Another from the City of New York contained 38,000 names, 

* Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 1391. 

f Appendix to Congressional Globe, 1800-61, p. 41. 



201 A REVIEW OF THE 

A greater number of persons petitioned in favor of the Crit- 
tenden Compromise than for any former measure that had ever 
been before the American Congress. 

Mr. Crittenden made repeated efforts to bring the Senate 
to a vote upon his pro|)ositions, but was steadily baliied by the 
parKamentary tactics of Republican Senators. On the lith of 
January, 1861, lie made an unsuccessful attempt to have it con- 
sidered, but it was j)ostponed until the following day. On this 
day it was again postponed by the vote of every Republican 
Senator present, in order to make way for the Paciiic Railroad 
Bill. He succeeded on the 16th, by a majority of a single vote, 
in bringing his resolution before the body ; every Republican 
Senator voting against its consideration. A direct vote upon the 
resolution so earnestly desired by the country, now seemed inevi- 
table ; but Republican fertility was not lacking, and a new display 
of tactics once more, baifled the compromisers. Mr. Clark, a 
Republican Senator from New Hampshire, moved to strike out 
the entire preamble and resolution offered by Mr. Crittenden, and 
in lieu thereof insert those of a directly opposite character, and 
such as were in accord with the Chicago platform. This motion 
pi'evailed by a vote of 25 to 23, every Republican present votiiig 
in its favor. Six secession Senators declined to vote on the Clark 
amendment, being already iirmly convinced that, all efforts to 
compromise between the sections would prove abortive because of 
Republican obstinacy. Mr. Iverson, of Georgia, one of the six, 
who declined toi vote, in his speech of December lltli, 1860, ex- 
pressed his utter disbelief that compromise in any wise could 
effect a &olution of the I^ational difficulties. He said : 

"Then, sir, is it proposed by Congressional legislation to appease the 
Southern States by the adoption of the doctrine of Congressional protec- 
tion to Slavery in the Territories of the United States ? Sir, I want to 
know who expects that such a remedy as that will ever be occorded by 
this Congress, or any other? "We know that the Republican party, so 
far as they are concerned, are a unit against any such provision. It was 
the great Shibboleth, on which they fought the recent battle and won it. 
It is the great principle which stands as the very basis of their political 
organization that Slavery shall never advance one inch beyond its 
present boundaries, and shall never plant a footprint in any Te-~'tory of 
the United States. 

" The Southern people now moving for secession, will never be satisfied 
wilh any concession made by the North that does not fully recognize not 
only the existence of Slavery in its present form, but the right of the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 203 

Southern people to emigrate to the common Territories Avith their slave 
property, and their riglit to Congressional protection while the Territorial 
existence lasts. The recent battle of the South was fought upon that 
very issue. The friends of Mr. Breckenridge put him upon the very 
grounds of Congressional protection to slave property in the Ten-itories ; 
and it was upon that ground that he carried the cotton States. 

" The North, if they yield at all, yield from an apprehension that the 
South is going to dissolve the Union, and they yield from fear of tho 
consequences. Of "what value would any concessions, made under these 
circumstances, be to the South ? None, as long as this vitiated public 
sentiment of Anti-Slaveiy exists in tlie hearts and minds of the Norther;i 
people. And, when is that ever going to be changed ? Never, as long as 
the Union lasts. It is a part, not only of their literary education, bat of 
then- religious creed. It enters into all the complications of society. It 
pervades the pulpit, the halls of legislation, the popular assemblies, the 
school houses — ^all toacli the doctrine of the 'irrepressible conflict'; and 
how many arguments in favor of Slavery, its morality, its social and 
political advantages, ever reach the Northern eye and the Northern ear."* 

Mr. Wigfa], of Texas, another of the six secession Senators 
who refused to vote" on the Clark amendment, gave his reasons 
for so doing in a speech delivered by him Januaiy 30th, 1861, 
He said : 

"What were the Clark resolutions? They were resolutions asserting- 
that no amendments to the Constitution were necessary ; and that the 
only matter of importance was that coercion should be used upon the 
sovereign States that had declared themselves out of the Union. When 
these resolutions came up as a substitute for the resolutions of the Sena- 
tor from Kentucky, every Senator wlio belongs to the dominant party— 
the party that is to be entrusted with the reins of Government on the 4th 
of March next, voted for the Clark resolutions as a substitute for the 
Crittenden resolutions. What then was the use of our stiiltifyino" our- 
selves ? What was the use of our sitting here and voting down resolu- 
tions, which expressed the opinion of the dominant party of the countrv 
in order that the Senator from Illinois might write letters or telegraph 
to different States that the Union was about to be saved ; that the Crit- 
tenden resolutions had been passed through the Senate. I did not intend 
to make myself a party to the fraud ; and therefore, when the question 
came up between the Crittenden and Clark resolutions, I for one forbore 
to vote. I knew the Senators on that side of the chamber had the ma- 
jority. We had appealed to them ; we liad begged them in God's mercj' 
and for the good of their own people and for the peace of the country,, 
to interpose and to settle this question upon some safe basis. "f 

All hope of a compromise that could save the Union was vir- 

tuall.y abandoned, when the Senate of the United States declined 

> accept the Crittenden propositions, as the basis of an adjudi- 

' ' 'ungvessional Globe of 1860-61, pp. 49-50.. 
\ :. nrijressional Globe, 1860-61, p, 665. 



205 A REVIEW OF THE 

cation. The intense anxiety, however, that existed in the breasts 
of those who desired to avert the calamity of civil war, suggested 
one plan of conciliation after another, but all to no purpose. 
The General Assemby of Virginia, on the 19th of January, 
1861, adopted resolutions expressing the opinion "that unless the 
unhappy controversy which now divides the States of the Con- 
federacy shall be satisfactorily adjusted, a permanent dissolntion 
of the Union is inevitable." For the purpose of averting this 
calamity, they invited all the States to appoint Commissioners to 
meet at the City of Washington, February 4th, 1861, in order 
that an earnest effort be made " to adjust the present unhappy 
controversies in the spirit in which the Constitution was originally 
framed." These resolutions expressed the belief that the Crit- 
tenden propositions with perhaps some modifications, would " be 
accepted as a satisfactory adjustment by the people of this Com- 
monwealth." 

Seven of the Southern States had already either seceded or 
were moving in that direction. Everything indicated the break- 
ing up of the Union, with its consequent calamities of civil war, 
and the probable downfall of the Government. To avert these 
calamities, all classes were willing to unite, except those who 
were resolved to risk national disaster rather than compromise 
tlieir party principles ; and those, also, who were fully assured 
that no satisfactory settlement could be obtained. The former 
were the anti-compromise Republicans of the North, and the 
latter, the Southern secessionists and their allies in the border 
States. Commissioners were appointed to the Peace Conference 
from fifteen I^orthern and seven Southern States, although the 
movement was one which met with little sympathy in Republican 
circles. Some of the ^Northern States refused to appoint Com- 
missioners, and those who did so, selected men of strong Anti- 
Slavery opinions, who were known to be opposed to any compro- 
mise whatsoever. Senators Chandler and Bingham telegraphed 
to the Governor of Michigan, urging him to send to the con- 
ference radical Abolitionists, in order that no compromise might 
be effected. A view of the composition (. ; Ise cunfei'c.nce, to 
one acquainted with the antecedents of the ,nembei*s from the 
North, was sufficient to satisfy tlie observer tha* little hopes could 
be based upon the actions of that body. What reasonable expec- 
tation of compromise could be anticipated from the deliberations 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 207 

of an assembly in which such men as Sahnon P. Chase and David 
Wihnot exercised a leading control ; and the majority of whose 
meinbers Avere associated together in the same political organiza- 
tion ? It Avas only in deference to pnblic opinion, that the radical 
Repnblican leaders consented at all, to participate in the move 
ments of the Peace Conference, for they never for one moment 
cherished the thought of acceding so far to Southern demands, 
as reason dictated it to be necessary, in order to avert the calamities 
of civil war. Bnt the people demanded compromise, and it was 
necessary for the politicians, in view of the popular desire, to 
yield in appearance, and thus shield themselves from public con- 
demnation. It was but a part, therefore, of that system of dis- 
simulation which had secured abolition ascendency under another 
name, and which was now baffling the wish of the people, until 
the party of new ideas had firmly grasped the reins of the Gen, 
eral Government. 

But a compromise was adopted by the conservatives of the 
Peace Congress, which restored the old Missouri division of 30'' 
30' to all the present territorj^ of the United States, l^orth of 
this line, slavery was to be prohibited, and south of it permitted ; 
but this compromise was not to extend to future territorial acqui- 
sition. And even this diluted compromise was extorted with 
such grinding reluctance, that it failed altogether in its effect. 
Southern men, who had still cherished some lingering hope of a 
settlement of the difficulties, left the convention fully satisfied 
that the day of conciliation had passed. John Tyler, the Presi- 
dent of the Peace Congress, however, in obedience to the resolu- 
tion of that body, communicated February 2'7th to the Senate 
and House of Representatives, the result of their deliberations. 
In the Senate, on motion of^ Mr. Crittenden, this was referred 
to a Select Committee. The Committee, on the following day, 
reported it as an amendment to the Constitution, but the Senate 
was never able to be brought to a direct vote upon it. Failing 
in this effort, Mr. Crittenden made a motion to substitute the 
amendment of the Peace Congress instead of his own proposi- 
tions. This was rejected by a very large majority, eight yeas to 
twenty-eight nays. Mr. Crittenden, on the 2d of March, 1861, 
after having been repeatedly thv»^arted, succeeded in getting a 
direct vote in the Senate upon his propositions of compromise, 
but they were defeated by a vote of nineteen in the affirmative 



2CB A REVIEW OF THE 

to twenty in tlie negative. They were rejected by Eepublican 
votes alone. 

In tlie House ■ of Representatives, everything looking to com- 
promise, met with resistance from Mr. Stevens and other leading 
Republicans. lie, with 37 others, on the Ist day of the 2d ses- 
sion of the 36th Congress, voted against Mr. Bot|bler'8 resolution 
to refer the President's message to a Committee of one from each 
State. On the Ttli of January, 1861, the Republicans of the 
House on a vote of yeas and nays, refused to consider certain 
propositions moved by Mr. Etheridge, of Tennessee, which were 
less favorable to the South than the Crittenden resolutions offered 
in the Senate. The Crittenden proposition in substance was sub- 
mitted as the ultimatum of the South to the House Committee 
of thirty-three, by Albert Rust, of Arkansas, but was voted down, 
no Republican sustaining it. Mr. Stevens, and 61 radical Repub- 
licans of the House, even voted against Corwin's amendment to 
the Constitution, reported by a majority of the Committee of 
thirty-three, and which declared that no power existed to interfere 
with slavery in the States. Every act of the radical Republican 
members of the House, as well as the Senate, during the last 
session of the 36th Congress indicated, that the Abolition wing 
of the party had fully resolved upon permitting no concession to 
the South, such as might lead to a paciiication between the sec- 
tions. "When a Conservative would offer in Congress, resolutions 
looking to a settlement of the IS^ational difficulties, some radical 
Republican would call for the regular order of business, and en- 
deavor to exclude their presentation. Mason "VV". Tappan, a 
Republican Congressman from ISTew Hampshire, and a member 
of the Committee of thirty-three, submitted February 5th, 1861, 
a minority report of that Committee, which declared that the 
provisions of the Constitution were ample for the preservation of 
the Union. Speaking of the Crittenden plan of compromise, he 
said: 

" It -would be the adoption into the Constitution of the creed of the 
ultra portion of the Democratic party, who broke up the Charleston Con- 
vention, because the dogma of protection to Slavery was not inserted in 
the Democratic platform. Sir, the Free States will never concede 
these terms of settlement, let the consequences be what they may."* 

Galusha A. Grow, Thaddeus Stevens, Hickman, Lovejoy, and 



''Congressional Globe, lSG0-61,p. 760. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 209 

otlier Eadicals of the House, on tlie 1st of Marcli, co-operated 
in preventing the reception of tlie Memorial of the Peace Con- 
gress. They baitted its reception by refusing to allow the sus- 
pension of the rules of the House. Mr. Stevens, in voting to 
prevent the suspension, remarked : 

" I think we had better go on with the regular order (of business). We 
have saved tliis Union so often that I am afraid we shall save it to 
death."* 

The day of compromise was past and the new era had set in, 
with the advent of the Republicans to power. The Abolition 
portion of the party were fully resolved to stand by their prin- 
ciples. B. F. Wade, in a speech delivered bj him in the Senate, 
December 17th, 1800, said : 

'• Sir, I know not what others may do ; but I tell you that with the 
verdict given in favor of the platform upon which otir candidates have 
been elected, so far as I am concerned, I would suffer anything to come 
before I would compromise tliat away. I say, then, that so far as I ara 
concerned, I will yield to no compromise."! 

A New England dinner* was given in the City of New York 
on Saturday, December 22d, ISCO, at which a number of Repub- 
lican orators, including William H. Seward, made speeches, all 
of whom rejected the idea of a compromise with the South. ;{: 
The New York Tribune^ of the same date, contained the follow- 
ing declaration : 

" We are enabled to state in the most positive tei-ms, that Mr. Lincoln 
is utterly opposed to any concession or compromise that shall yield one 
iota of the position occupied by the Eepublican party ; that the great 
North, aided by hundreds of thousands of patriotic men in the slave 
States, have determined to preserve the Union — peaceably, if they can — 
forcibly, if they must !" 

The following sentiments, to "the same purport, were quoted 
as emanating from Mr. Lincoln, by James H. Campbell, of Penn- 
sylvania,, a Republican member of the House, in his speech of 
February 14th, 18G1 : 

" I will suffer death before I will consent or advise my friends to con- 
sent to any concession or compromi e which looks like buying the privi- 
lege of taking possession of the Government, to which we have a 
constitutional right, because, whatever I might think of the A^arious 
propositions before Congress, I should regard any concession in the face 

•<^ Congressional Globe, 1860-61, pp. 1333-3. 

\Glohe of 1860-61, pp. 103-3. 

^New York Herald, December 34th, 1860. 



210. A REVIEAV OF THE 

of mcnaco as (lie destruction of the Government itself, and a consent 
on all hands, that our system shall be brought down to a level with the 
existing disorganized state of affairs in Mexico." * 

Following in the wake of the New York TrlhuTie, the chame- 
leon oro-an of New England Puritanism, the influential press of 
the North, w^ith the exception of the Albany Evening Journal^ 
decried compromise with the South as an ignoble surrender to 
the behests of the slave power. After the lirst alarm of seces- 
sion had extorted from their leader the declaration that he would 
resist all coercive measures to preserve the Union., the whole 
radical journalistic fraternity gradually veered into an attitude 
that compelled their Jupiter Tonans of the press to change his 
base 5vith them. No compromise with traitors was henceforth 
the standing utterance of the combined radical press of the 
North. Even wdiilst Senators and Members of Congress, in 
melifluous sentences and smooth words, spoke of fraternal affec- 
tion and the blessings of the Union, the radical press was tecm- 
ino- with the most bitter denunciations of the Southern rebels 
and their institutions, and so far as they had the power, consign- 
in o^ them and the Northern compromisers to the lowest depths 
of Hadean darkness and seething perdition. Shielded by the 
press, those wdio hesitated elsewhere to utter their real sentiments, 
spoke with courage, and vented their spite in strains of malignity 
that cast into the shade the annals of all former history. The 
radical ecclesiastical as well as the secular press were in entire 
accord in this system of wholesale denunciation ; and besides, the 
Abolition pulpit came in for its full share of credit in stemming 
the tide of compromise, and fanning the flames of the approach- 
ing revolution. 

Were Southern statesmen then, mistaken, when they declared 
• in Congress that no compromise coidd stay secession % Why, it 
was the stereotyped assertion of the radical press and pulpit of 
the North, that the era of conciliation and compromise had passed 
forever, and they all rejoiced to be able to say so. Ent, unlike 
the sincere AboUtionists of the Philippo-Garrison school, they 
lacked the honesty to declare manfully and openly the objects of 
their party. By fraud and deception they continued still to de- 
ceive the Northern people, and have them to believe that they 
were the only friends of the Union and free government. 

'^Congressional Glohe, :8C0-'G1, p. 110. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 211 

"Whilst the Garrisonians rejoiced in the dissohition of the Union, 
because they believed this event would overthrow slavery, the 
political Abolitionists pretended that they cherished unbounded 
love for the Constitution of the Republic, In opposing compro- 
mise, they felt assured that a collision of arms would supervene, 
which would end in the overthrow of Southern slavery. That, 
instead of the preservation of the Union, was what inspired 
their opposition to every proposition of settlement with the 
South. The mob philosopher of the Tribune^ in his journal 
of the 26th of February, 1861, disclosed in somewhat oracular 
words, his genuine opinions. lie says : " We are not willing to 
make every sacrifice for the preservation of the Union, because 
we value liberty and right more than we do the Union." Phil- 
osophers do not seek under dark expressions to hide their ideas ; 
they express them fearlessly and accept the consequences. If 
slavery was an unendurable evil, it should have been battled with 
Gamsonian weapons and under genuine colors ; and history will 
remove the philosopher,s cloak from the statue of every one who 
otherwise fought it. The stern arbiter of time ever consigns the 
agitating knave and hypocrite to the historic recesses of execration 
and contempt, where the shades of Hobespierre, Danton and 
Marat are g,athered. 



213 ■ A REVIEW OF THE 



CHAPTER XIII. 

STATE SOVKKEIGNTY AND CENTRALIZATION, OR THE OPPOSITE PRINCIPLES 
OF GOVERNMENT STRUGGLING FOR ASCENDENCY. 

As stated in a former chapter^ 'two schools of political opinions 
strove for mastery in the Convention of ITST^ which framed the 
Federal Constitution. The same fundamental questions which 
divided the framers of our Governmenty have from that period 
continued to separate the American people into two antagonistic 
parties, each of which trace a lineal descent from revolutionary 
ancestors. The effcvrt of the one party was to consolidate the 
States into a Is'ational Government, so as to give it that strength 
and durability which monarchies possess ; but this was combatted 
and successfully resisted by those who were unwilling to merge 
the sovereignty of the States in any consolidated form, De 
Tocqueville says : 

" When the war of independence was terminated, and the foundations 
of the new government were to be laid down, the nation was divided 
between two opinions which are as old as the world, and which are per- 
petually to be met with, under all the forms and all the names which 
have ever obtained in free communities — the one tending to limit, the 
other to extend indefinitely the power of the people, 

" The party which desired to limit the power of the people, endeavored 
to apply its doctrines more especially to the Constitution of the Union, 
whence it derived its name of Federal. Tlie other party, which affected 
to be more exclusively attached to the cause of liberty, took that of Re- 
publican. America is the land of Democracy, and the Federalists were 
always in a minority ; but thoy reckoned on their side, almost all the 
great men who had been called fortli by the war of independence, and 
their moral influence was very considerable. Their course was, more- 
over, favored by circumstances. The ruin of the Confederation had im- 
pressed the people with a dread of anarchy, and the Federalists did not 
fail to profit by this transient disposition of the multitude. For ten or 
twelve years they were at the head of affaii's, and they were able to 
apply some, though not aU their j^rinciples ; for the hostile current was 
becoming from day to day too violent to bj checked or stemmed. In 
ISOl, the Republicans got possession of the Government : Thomas Jellfer- 
Bon was named President, and he increased the influence of their party 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 213 

by the weight of his celebrity, tlie greatness of his talents, and the im- 
menre extent of his popularity."* 

Whilst the Federalists held the reins of the General Govern- 
ment, there were entrapped in the passage of the Acts of Con- 
gress known as the Alien and Sedition laws. These were seized 
upon as an exposure of the cloven-foot of their monarchical prin- 
ciples ; and the people were aroused to the dangers that threat- 
ened free government from a further continuance of that party 
in power. The leaders of the Republican or Democratic party- 
conceived that the liberty of the people was in jeopardy, if laws 
infringing the Constitution could be passed with impunity ; and 
they determined to resist the illegal measures of the ruling fac- 
tion and secure their condemnation by the verdict of American 
public opinion. For this purpose Jefferson, the prominent advo- 
cate of the Republican theory of Government, drafted a series of 
resolutions for the Kentucky Legislature ; and similar resolves 
w^ere sketched by Madison for the Virginia Assembly, both of 
which received the sanction of these legislative bodies. The 
resolutions were transmitted to the Legislatures of the other 
States for their approval or disapproval. The Democratic party 
throughout the Union endorsed the correctness of the doctrines 
enunciated in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 ,• 
and these famous declarations of governmental principles formed 
in after years the political creed of the organization. The sound- 
ness of the principles of these resolutions was necessarilv dis- 
puted by the Federalists as being directed against their own 
legislative measures. These resolutions formed the platform 
upon wdiich the Democratic party triumphed in 1800, and suc- 
ceeded in electing Thomas Jefferson to the Chief Magistracy of 
the Nation. 

The cardinal principle was laid down in the Virginia and 
Kentucky resolutions, that the General Government was one of 
limited authority, granted originally by the States as the sover- 
eign members of the Confederation, and that in case undelegated 
powers should be assumed, such became void and of no force, 
because unauthorized in the original constitutional compact. It 
was farther declared that the General Government was not the 
" exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated 
to itself, since that would have made its discretion and not the 

*De Tocqueville's Democracy, j)p. 187-8. 



211 A REVIEW OF TIIE 

Constitution tlie measure of its powers ; but as in all cases of 
compact among powers having no common judge, each party has 
an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of tlio 
mode and measure of redress." 

The General Government, according to the above theory, was 
simply the representative of the delegated authority of the sove- 
reign States of the Union, and was authorized to execute its civil 
mandates upon the people of every State, so far as its authority 
extended. It was, therefore, simply the agent of the States for 
the execution of certain general powers, wliich are necessary in 
all governments, and which alone, could properly be performed 
by a federal head. All the authority granted to the General 
Government was of a civil nature, and specified only civil modes 
for its execution. The union of the States was a Confederated 
Kepublic, and was different from alJ former leagues of this 
character, in the feature already mentioned, that it permitted 
the Central Government to execute the general laws upon 
the people of the States themselves. Under the articles of con- 
federation, the laws of Congress could only be executed through 
the instrumentalities of the State organizations, and it v/as, in 
the main, to remedy this defect that the Federal Union was 
formed. All the power delegated to the Federal Government to 
be executed over the people of the States, was either of a civil 
character or such as the execution of civil law required. In the 
convention which framed the Federal Compact, the exertion of 
military power against the States or tho people thereof, save 
as the Constitution expressed, had been explicitly refused. 

We find by the proceedings of the Federal Convention of 
May 31st, 1787, that the adoption of a clause was defeated, 
" authorizing an exertion of tlie force of the whole ajrainst a 
delinquent State." This Mr. Madison opposed in a speech, in 
which he said : 

" The use of force against a State, would look more like a declaration 
of war than an infliction of punishment; and would probably be considered 
by the party attacked, as a dissolution of all the previous compacts by 
wliich it might be bound." 

Upon Madison's motion, the consideration of this clause was 
unanimously postponed, and it was never again presented. 

The following extract from 'No. 16 of the Federalist, combats 
the idea of the General Government being clothed with tho right 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 815 

of coercing tlie States of the Union, as chimerical and absohitely 
preposterous : 

"Whoever considers the populousness and strength of several of these 
States singly, at the present junctui-e, and looks forward to what they 
will become, even at the distance of half a century, will at once dismiss, 
as idle and visionary, any scheme which aims at regu'ating them or 
coercing them in their collective capacities, by the General Government. 
A project of this kind is little less romantic than the monster-taming 
spirit attributed to the fabulous heroes and demi-gods of antiquity. 
Even in those Confederacies which have been composed of members 
smaller than many of our counties, the principle of legislation for sover- 
eign States, supported by military coercion, has never been found effec- 
tual. It has rarely been attempted to be employed against the weaker 
members, and in most instances attempts thus to coerce the refractory 
and disobedient, have been the s gnals of bloody wars, in which one-half 
the Confederacy has displayed its banners against the other. The first 
war of this kind would probably terminate in a dissolution of the Union." 

That eminent patriot and statesman, Alexander Hamilton, who 
was a member of the convention which framed the Constitution 
of the United States, in a speech delivered by him in the year 
1788, in the ratifying convention of the State of New York, 
used the following language in reference to the coercive power 
being entrusted to the General Government : 

*' The coercion of States is one of the maddest projects that was ever 
devised, A failure of compliance will never be confied to a single State. 
This being the case, can we suppose it wise to hazard a civil war ? It 
would be a nation at war with itself. Can any reasonable mail be well 
disposed toward a government that makes war and carnage the only 
means of supporting ittelf — a government that can exist only by the 
sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. 
This single consideration sliou.d not be inefficient to dispose every peace- 
able citizen against such a government." 

The Virginia and Kentucky principle of the sovereignty cf 
States, and their non-coercion through military force by the Gen- 
eral Government, was the only doctrine compatible with republi- 
can principles, which declare that all govermnent rests upon- the 
consent of the governed. And so signal was the overthrow of 
the antagonistic doctrine of the Federal party, that the Govern- 
ment was a consolidated union of the people of all the States in 
one National Republic, that from the election of Thomas Jeffer- 
son until that of Abraham Lincoln, no President was chosen upon 
the avowed principles of consolidation. But tiie principles of 
monarchy ever continued secretly to form the leading character- 
istics of the party, which at all times was arrayed in opposition 



216 A REVIEW OF THE 

to the l^ational Democracy. On this point hear De Tocqueville, 
in his History cf Democracy, YoL I, pp. 190-1. 

" But when one comes to study the secret projiensities which govern 
the factions of America, he easily perceives that the gTeater part of 
them are more or less connected with one or the other of those two 
divisions which have always existed in free communities. The deeper 
we penetrate into the workings of these parties, the more do we perceive 
that the object of the one is to limit and the other to extend the popular 
authority. I do not assert that the ostensible end, or even that the 
secret aim of American parties is to promote the rule of aristocracy or 
democracy in the country, but I affirm that aristocratic or democratic 
passions may easily be detected at the bottom of all parties ; and although 
they escape a superficial observation, they are the main point, the very 
soul of every faction of the United States." 

This penetrative writer elsewhere permits it clearly to appear 
that the Democratic was the party of the people, whilst its oppo- 
nent was that which w^as ever influenced by aristocratic or mon- 
archical principles. 

Resistance to the efforts of the Federal party to enlarge the 
powers of the General Government led, as has been seen, to the 
enunciation of the principles of the Virginia and Kentucky reso- 
lutions, and to the utter prostration, for the time, of the Consoli- 
dationists. But, although the Federal party was overthrown, its 
principles as already noted still continued to live, and inhere in 
all the organizations which succeeded it in opposition to the 
National Democracy. The question of a protective tariff was 
germinated in the principles of Ilamiltonianism ; and after the 
Alien and Sedition Lav/s, was the next which caused serious 
alarm, and threatened danger to the Union. " Before 181G, pro- 
tection to home industry had been an incident to the levy of 
revenue, but in 1816 it became an object." * 

The tariff' of 1816, having inaugurated the protective policy, the 
measure was seized upon by the politicians of the Ilamiltonian 
school as one that might again re-instate their party in power. 
From this period, once in every four years, the question was 
brought up with the evident purpose of influencing the Presi- 
dential election. The tariff bills of 1816, 1820, 1824 and 1828, 
each succeeding the other in its degree of protection, became the 
regular appendages, as it were, of the Presidential canvas. The 
great debate on the tariff before Congress at the session of 1823 

* Bent-jn's View. Vol. 1, p. 3G6. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 217 

and 1824:, was the commencement of that dispute which after- 
wards led to the nuUiiication difficulties. Members of Congress, 
" divided (at this time) pretty much on the line which always 
divided them on a question of constructive powers. The pro- 
tection of domestic industry, not being among the granted pow- 
ers, was looked for in the incidental, and denied by the strict 
Cojistructionists to be a substantive power to be exercised for 
the direct purposes of protection ; but by all, at that time, and 
ever since the first tariff 1789, to be incident to the revenue- 
raising power, and an incident to be regarded in the exercise of 
that power." ^ " After 1821, the ISTew England States (always 
meaning the greater portion when a section is spoken of) classed 
with the protective States — ^leaving the South alone as a section 
against that policy." f The Southern States believed themselves 
impoverished under the protective policy, to enrich those of the 
North. 

The Southern States were therefore almost a unit in opposi- 
tion to a protective tariff. The Act of 1828 bore the most 
oppressively of all against the interests of the people of that 
section. South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, 
Alabama and Virginia, had all united in remonstrances against 
the principle of protection ; declared over and over again its un- 
constitutionality, and passed resolutions condemning the system. 
The people of these and other Southern States pointed out the 
inequality and the injustice of a protective tariff, and showed 
that the one section of the country was enriched at the expense 
of the other. This they urged was altogether unjust, and sus- 
tained by no warraftit in the Federal Constitution. But Southern 
remonstrance was in vain ; and all efforts to secure a" repeal of 
the odious tariff legislation proved useless and abortive. The 
election of Andrew Jackson was a triumph of constitutional 
principles over a protective policy ; and the Southern people de- 
manded that its true import be considered. After his second 
election as President of the United States, South Carolina, seeing 
no hopes for the attainment of their rights by a repeal of an un- 
unjust tariff, determined to have recourse to those reserved rights 
which she, as a sovereign member of the Confederacy, possessed. 
A convention of her people accordingly assembled on the 19th 

* Benton's View. Vol. 1, p. 33. 
\ Benton's View. Vol. 1, p. 97. 



218 A EEVIEW OF THE 

of November, 1832, and passed an ordinance of nullification, 
wliich declared the existing tariff " null, void and of no law, nor 
binding on this State, its officers and citizens." The duties im- 
posed by the Federal law were forbidden to be paid within the 
State after the 1st day of February, 1833. 

Matters had now approached a crisis ; and great caution and 
sagacity were required in order to obviate a collision of authori- 
ties. Fortunately, statesmen at that period ruled America, if an 
exception did not exist as to the Presidential occupant. A phil- 
osophic foreigner's estimate of President Jackson will not be out 
of place in this connection : 

*' Gen. Jackson, whom the American people have twice elected to be 
the head of their government, is a man of a violent temper and medio, 
ere talents ; no one circumstance in the whole course of his career ever 
proved that he is qualified to govern a free people ; and indeed the ma- 
jority of the enliglitened classes of the Union have always been opposed 
to him."* 

If nothing moi*e existed to show that Gen. Jackson was devoid 
of the necessary judgment to conduct the Government of a free 
people, sufficient would be found in his Proclamation of the 11th of 
December, 1832, to the people of South Carolina. The whole 
scope and tenor of tliis proclamation to the nulliliers, were 
antagonistic to the principles of the party of w^hich he professed 
himself a member ; and if a body of prudent statesmen had not 
been found in the country, the Republic at that early day might 
have sunk beneath the waves of civil convulsion. For although 
South Carolina was alone in her nullification attitude, her South- 
ern sisters sympathized with her in her demands, and would have 
resisted her forcible coercion upon the battle field. Even the 
patriotic statesman of Roanoke, though upon the brink of the 
grave, declared that should Gen. Jackson attempt to coerce South 
Carolina into the Union, he would cause himself to be buckled 
upon his old white charger, and that he himself would fight in 
defense of liberty and State sovereignty. 

President Jackson recommended to Congress that additional 
power be granted to him to collect the revenue at Charleston, 
and that sufficient troops be placed at his command so as to 
enable him to enforce the laws against the people of South Caro- 
lina. A bill for this purpose was reported by the Judiciary 

*De Tocqueville's Democracy, Vol. I, p. 316. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 219 

Committee in the Senate, whicli called forth an animated debate, 
and for a period produced great excitement throughout the 
country. Many feared that the days of the Republic were num- 
bered, and different opinions were entertained as to the best 
method of averting the dangers that were threatening the peace 
and integrity of the Union. The North permitted itself to be 
seduced into the support of the monarchical measures recom- 
mended by President Jackson, one of which was the coercion by 
military force of a State by the General Government. This had 
ever been a cherished principle of the Federal Consolida- 
tionists, and in this instance was seized upon by Gen. Jackson as 
a weapon by which to defeat his political enemy, John C. Cal- 
houn, the philosophic statesman of South Carolina, who was the 
ablest defender of State Sovereignty, and the admitted father of 
nullilication. In enforcing the view of the General Government 
held by Webster and the other leaders of the Federal school, 
President Jackson placed himself in antagonism to the principles 
he had ever professed to advocate, and inflicted upon free gov- 
ernment the severest blow it had ever been compelled to endure 
in America. Being a Southerner by birth, education and sympa- 
thies, a member of the Jeffersonian State Pight party, and a man 
whose military career gave him a reputation with the whole 
people of the country ; the President by the force of his position 
and influence, was able to carry to the support of his measures 
all except those who had carefully studied the character of the 
General Government, and who apj)rehended danger to liberty in 
the exercise of undelegated authority ; and who, besides, had the 
boldness to defend their sincere opinions, even in the face of 
controlling authority. But the obsequious vassals of party are 
ever ready to truckle before the throne of power, and pay their 
obeisance to any despot who may for the time happen to fill it. 
It was so in this case. Power emenated from the Federal Execu- 
tive, and obedience to his dictates was the surest method of 
securing power. 

Besides humbling his bitter enemy, the great statesman of 
South Carolina, President Jackson, in asking power to enforce 
the laws against the nullifiers, doubtless desired nothing more 
than to be able to preserve the Union of the States. This was 
the opinion of the llTorthern people, and also of many in the 
South ; but the real danger existed in the establishment of an 



220 A REVIEW OF THE 

nnconstitutional precedent. Rome was perfectly safe when she 
called Cincinnatus from his plow, and clothed him with unlimited 
powers ; but she had cause to grieve long when she gave the dic- 
tatorship to Sjlla and Marius, whose legions overthrew the bul- 
warks of liberty, and rioted in the blood of their countrymen. 
But a resolute band of Southern statesmen, seeing the danger 
that threatened freedom, boldly arrayed themselves in opposition 
to the demands of Executive power, and though prostrated, 
placed upon record the unmistakable words of truth, which will 
live and be cherished whilst republics endure. They declined 
clothing President Jackson with power to coerce South Carolina, 
not because (as most of them declared) they favored nullification, 
but because the Constitution granted no authority for this pur- 
pose. All power granted to the Federal Government was of a 
civil nature, and it was never contemplated by the framers of the 
Government that the military authority should be exerted save 
as auxiliary to the civil, and in that case as the Constitution 
specified. In the debate upon that occasion, Judge Bibb, of 
Kentucky, spoke as follows : 

*' It seemed to him that a falsa issue was presented. The question of 
war against South Carolina is presented as the only alternative. The 
issue was false. The first question was between justice and injustice. 
Shall we do justice to the States, who were united with South Carolina 
in complaint, and remonstrance against the injustice and oppression of 
the tariff? Shall we cancel the obligations of justice to five other States, 
because of the impetuosity and impatience of South Carolina, under 
wrong and oppression? The question ought not to be, whether we have 
the physical power to crush South Carolina, but whether it is not our 
duty to heal her discontents, to conciliate a member of the Union, to give 
peace and happiness to the adjoining States which have made common 
cause with South Carolina, to compel her to remain in the Union ? Shall 
we keep her in the Union by force of arms for the purpose of compelling 
her submission to the tariff laws of which she complains ? 

"My creed is, that by the Declaration of: Independence, the States were 
declared to be free and independent States, thirteen in number, not one 
nation, — that the old articles of Confederation united them as distinct 
States, not as one people ; — that the treaty of peace of 1783, acknowledged 
their independence as States, not as a single nation ; that the Federal 
Government was formed by States ; submitted by States ; and adopted 
by the States as distinct nations or States ; not as a single nation or people. 

" He would like to know when and where South Carolina surrendered 
the right to secede from the Union in case of a dangerous invasion of her 
rights by the Federal Government."* 

^Stephens' War between the States. Vol. 1, pp. 425-37. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 231 

Jolm Tyler, of Yirginia^ said : 

" The idea that ours is a National Government, has lately received 
much encouragement from high sources, The President in his procla- 
mation, speaks of the people as one mass, and of the Government as 
forming us into one . Nation. "When were the States, he would ask, 
welded together ? Was it before or since the revolution ?" 

Further speaking of the overthrow of the principles of Fed- 
eralism, Tyler says : 

" In the year 1798,* all these doctrines were, he had thought, put down 
completely and forever. He had not expected to be obliged to renew the 
cont:st. For thirty yeai-s they had now been in obscurity, but suddenly 
they are waived into life, and brought into daylight by the President's 
proclamation. 

"The President of the United States had declared against the doctrines 
of secession. But the President should not decide that doctrine for him. 
The military power was called for, to support this foregone conclusion of 
the President of the United States. If South Carolina secede, he is to be 
armed with military and naval power to subdue her." 

Mr. Tyler speaks of the dangerous precedent that would be 
established by acquiescing in the executive demands. He said : 
" He had all proper confidence in the Executive, but he was not dis- 
posed to confer very great powers upon any Executive. If they should 
even be used by tiie present President for the common good, and our 
institutions should come out safe from the trial, the precedent would be 
left staixding on the statute book, and other Presidents might not use the 
power so benefioially/'f 

Mr. Poindexter,. of Mississippi, deduced the origin of the un- 
constitutional power claimed by Gen. Jackson, as follows. lie 
said : 

" But this extra official document (Jackson's proclamation to the people 
of South Carolina) owes its. origin, in reference to the political heresies it 
c jntains, to the speech of the Honorable Senator (Mr. Webster) of Massa- 
chusetts, delivered in this body in 1830, on what were familiarly called 
" Foots Resolutions," These principles have never before been avowecR 
by any politic a1 party in this country. They leave the old Federal School 
far in tlie rear, in their utter consolidation tendencies, and were for ths 
first time introduced to the notice of the American i>eople, in tlie speeds 
of the Honorable Senator to which I have referred.":]; 

Several other distinguished statesmen of the South, with John 
C. Calhoun, took the ground that no power had been delegated 
to the Federal Government to exert the military arm againsfe 
a State in its sovereign capacity, the people of which had assumed 

*He refers to the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, 
j;Aational Intelligencer, Feb. 6tli. 18o3. 
XNational Intelligencer y March 19;. 1833, 



£23 . A REVIEW OF THE 

either a nullifjing or seceding attitude. Even tlie Virginia 
House of Delegates condemned the doctrines contained in the 
President's Proclamation, characterizing them as the product of 
Federal inspiration. John Floyd, Governor of Virginia, in his 
Message of December 13th, 1S32, said : 

"Many questions of deep import have heretofore agitated these States, 
but none have equalled this in importance, either in the interest it ought 
to excite among the people or the effect it may produce upon the Confed- 
eracy A sovereign State has spoken her sentiments in relation to this 
Subject, a:id has pronounced those laws unconstitutional. Should force 
be resorted to by the Federal Government, the horror of the scenes here- 
after to be witnessel cannot now be pictured, even by the affrighted 
imagination. 

** The genius and spirit of our institutions are wholly adverse to such a 
step, and ought not to permit the mind of any to look in that direction— 
for what safety has any State of her existence as a sovereign, if differ- 
ence of opinion should be punished with the sword as treason? Surely, 
civil war is not a remedy for wrongs in a country where the people are 
recognized as sovereign, and each individual has the right to the full and 
free expression of his opinions.'"* 

But, although the Force Bill became a law, reason and good 
sense still Vv'hispered that the only proper way to j? reserve the 
Kepublic, was by the removal on the part of the General Gov- 
ernment of those features of the tariff, which had occasioned the 
discontent in South Carolina and the other Southern States. 
Measures introduced into Congress for that purpose, and which 
received the approbation of those bodies, satisfied the South 
Carolinians that it was the desire of the General Government to 
respect their rights, and without delay they yielded all further 
resistance to the national authority. 

As soon as the storm of nullification had spent its strength, the 
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions became again the acknowledged 
creed of the Democratic party both Korth and South. Even 
President Jackson, through his political organs, attempted to 
satisfy public opinion, that no doctrine enunciated in his procla- 
mation to the people of South Carolina was repugnant to the 
principles of Jeffersonian State Sovereignty. But all sucli 
attempts failed to convince the logical understanding of the small 
band of bold adherents of State rights, whom the popular storm 
had well nigh overborne, because of their firm defense of the 
principles upon which Republican Government rested- The 

^National Intelligencer, December 18, 1833. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 223 

stanneli defenders of principle saw tlie fatal stabs tliat Jeifer- 
sonianisni liad received, and the danger that threatened liberty 
in the coercion precedent which had been established. The. re- 
endorsement of the resolntions of 1798 by the Democratic party, 
was unable to give ample assurance of safety to the sincere be- 
lievers in State Sovereignty, in view of the manner those doc- 
trines had been trailed in the dust in obedience to the demands 
of impassioned excitement and popular phrensy, 

A lesson had been learned by the friends of Free Government 
not soon to be forgotten. That little reliance was to be placed 
upon the declarations of politicians, when interest admonished 
their repudiation, was a demonstrated truth. It was also ascer- 
tained that the will of a people, expressed in times of great com- 
motion, is not the utterance of convictions based upon reason 
and justice ; but rather the eifervescence of passion and vindictive 
hatred. The vast influence of position on sucli occasions was 
likewise clearly perceived ; and it was observed that one man 
may have it in his power, to so arouse a whole people that the 
compacts of liberty aiford no protection to guaranteed rights. 
What assurance of safety had those who dreaded consolidation, 
wdien the very party itself which came originally into power 
upon the principles of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, 
could be induced, through Presidential influence, to re]3udiate its 
cardinal doctrine ; and the one of all others that distinguished it 
fi'om its Federal antagonist. But the deed was done, the prin- 
ciples upon which the Constitution wms founded were prostituted 
at the anarchical cry of national preservation ; and it but re- 
mained for the enemies of the Federal Union, like the conquer- 
ors at Phillippi, to overwhelm in a general collision the defenders 
of constitutional republicanism. 

It was not difiicult for State Sovereignty in the forum of rea- 
son to maintain its ascendency, while statesmen were permitted 
to rule in the Halls of the nation. In peaceful times this prin- 
ciple triumphed, and no party in America could have sustained 
itself that would have openly endorsed the contrary opinion. It 
was only in the Northern wing of the Whig party that the 
Hamiltonian principles were still visible. But the Abolition 
party and its successor, the Kepublican, were based upon a pure 
monarchical creed, which stamped them as the legitimate deendsc- 
ants of Federal ancestors. The avowed and leading principle of 



23-1 A REVIEW OF THE 

lliat party, wliicli declared that no more slave States should he 
admitted into the Union, was itself a plain repudiation of the 
principles of Free Government, which assumes that all authority- 
flows from consent. And even the agitation of slavery by the 
Korthern people was an interference with the rights of those of 
the Southern States, over whom, under the Constitution, they 
had no control. 

The known principles of the Republican party were sufficient 
to determine the people of the South, after the election of Abra- 
ham Lincoln in 1860, to seek their safety in the exercise of those 
reserved rights which they, as States, had never surrendered, to 
the General Government. The preparations that from that 
period, began to be made throughout the whole of the Cotton 
States, again made the question of State Sovereignty a leading 
subject of discussion in all parts of the Union. That portion of 
the Democratic party in the North which still adhered to Jeffor- 
sonian principles, viewed the Constitution as a compact between 
the States; and that no power could be exerted agaiDst the States 
or the people thereof, save as had been already expressed and 
delegated. According to this view of the Constitution, iii case 
one or more of the States should choose to secede from the Gen- 
eral Government, no authority was believed to exist by which 
these seceding members of the Confederated Republic could be 
coerced back into the Union. James Buchanan, in his last Annual 
Message, gave the following opinion with reference to the coer- 
cion of the seceding States : 

"The question fairly stated is: Has the Constitution delegated to 
Congress the power to force a State into ; ubmission, which is attempting 
to withdraw or has act'aclly withdrawn from tho Confederacy ? If an- 
swered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has 
been conferred upon Congress to declare and make war against a State. 
After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no 
such power has been delegated to Congress or to any other department 
of the Federal Government. It is manifest upon an inspection of the 
Constitution, that this is not amongst the specific and enumerated pow- 
ers granted to Congress ; and it is equally apparent that its exercise is 
not "nece sary and proper for carrying into execution" any one of 
these powers. So far from this power having been delegated to Congress, 
it was expres ly refused by the convention which framed the Consti- 
tution." 

Mr. Buchanan had taken the precaution to consult Jeremiah 
S. Black, his Attorney-General, and one of the ablest lawyers of 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 22.J 

the nation, as to the powers of the General Government, with 
reference to the question of secession. The Attorney General in his 
reply to the President, showed clearly that military force could 
only 1x3 used to aid in the execution of civil powers, and only 
then, when the civil officers would be resisted in their duties, and 
the appropriale State official would call upon the President for 
assistance as the Constitution specifies. " But," says the Attorney- 
General, "what if the feeling in any State against the United 
States should become so universal that the Federal officers them- 
selves, (including Judges, District- Attornies and Marshals) would 
be reached by the same influence, and resign their places ? Of 
course, the first step would be to appoint others in their stead, if 
others could be got to serve. But in such an event, it is more 
than probable that great difficulty would be found in filling the 
offices. We can easily conceive how it might become altogether 
impossible. We are, therefore, obliged to consider what can be 
clone in case we have no courts, judicial process, and no 
ministerial officer to execute it. In that event, troops would 
certainly be out of place, and their use wholly illegal. If 
they are sent to aid courts and marshals, there must be courts and 
marshals to be aided. Without the exercise of these functions, 
which belong exclusively to the civil service, the laws cannot be 
executed in any event, no matter what may be the physical 
strength which the Government has at its command. Under 
such circumstances, to send a military force into any State with 
orders to act against the people, would be simply making war 
upon them. 

" If it be true that war cannot be declared, nor a system of 
general hostilities be carried on by the Central Government 
against a State, then it seems to follow that an attempt to do so 
w^ould be ipso facto an expulsion of such State from the Union. 
Being treated as an alien and an enemy, she would be compelled 
to act accordingly. And if Congress shall break up the present 
Union by unconstitutionally putting strife, and enemity, and 
armed hostility, between sections of the country, instead of the 
domestic tranquility which the Constitution was meant to insure, 
will not all the States be absolved from their Federal obligations ? 
Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or 
their blood to carry on a contest like that ?" 

Without a further attempt to specify the names of leading 



226 A REVIEW OF THE 

Northern Democrats, wlio maintained the doctrine of State Sov- 
ereignty ; and tliat the General Government was clothed with 
no power to exert the coercive arm against States in case of their 
secession, it can be affirmed with confidence, tliat this was the 
accepted doctrine of the great body of the party in the North, 
as well as in the Sonth. This was the opinion of all who, in any 
wise, were conversant with the history of the formation of the 
Federal Constitution; and -who were disposed to resist the mon- 
archical tendency, which, from the origin of the Republic, had 
shown its workings ; and which, to sagacious minds, seemed to 
threaten entire overthrow to the Constitutional Government. The 
American Union was, as they conceived, the product of the ad- 
vanced intelligence of the age and founded upon the principle 
of consent alone. Experience had taught mankind to believe 
that republican institutions could endure in their simplicity only 
in the government of small countries and States ; and that if 
they were to be extended over large territories, this must be 
accomplished by means of confederations amongst these, still per- 
mittino- the several allied States to remain sovereign as to all 
power not expressly delegated to the Federal Union. That this was 
the character of the American Confederacy, had been the received 
and steadily avowed opinion of all who maintained rank amongst 
the sound thinkers and statesmen of the Jefferson school of 
politics. Even publicists,* who were strictly members of neither 
political party, viewed the Government as a compact between the 
several States ; and that as the Union was constituted, there was 
nothing to prevent a State from seceding, should she choose to 
assume and exercise her reserved powers. 

But such a construction of the Constitution was never agree- 
able to that party, which strove to concentrate power and to dic- 
tate their opinions to the people of the whole country. That 
school of politics, which have ever striven to impose their views of 
social polity upon other States and people, would necessarily be 
the enemies of State rights, as declared in the Yirginia and Ken- 



*Judge Tucker, Professor of Law in the University of William and 
Mary, Virginia, in his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, issued 
about 1803, and Mr. Rawle, an eminent Jurist of Pennsylvania, in his 
work upon the Constitution, published in 1826, took the view^ that the 
General Government was simply the result of a comi^act between the 
States ; and that the right of secession was a sequence that necessarily 
flowed therefrom, should the States choose to exercise this denier remedy 
for experienced or apprehended evils. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 227 

tucky resolutions of 1798. And hence Puritanism from the first 
h.as been arrayed against them. 

The doctrine of abolitionism conld derive its support in 
no other principle than that of monarchy ; even though slavery 
should be conceded to be a moral and social evil ; for it was the 
effort of one people to interfere with the affairs of another and 
dictate how they shall manage them. The principle thus assumed 
was the same as had ever enchained the nations of the old world 
and bound them with the manacles of despotism ; and again, 
not dissimilar from that which riveted ecclesiastical fetters upon 
independent thought, which modern ages have busied themselves in 
disrupting. The inquisitorial judges and the robed prelates of the 
Spanish Peninsula, made no other assumption than was claimed 
by the abolition band infidel priesthood* of the North, when they 
demanded the emancipation of the negro slaves in the Southern 
States. And all the blood that flowed on St. Bartholomew's 
night, and that in religious wars moistened the soil of Europe, 
was shed in obedience to that same dictatorial sjiirit, which would 
impose the conscientious convictions of one people upon the 
minds of another. 

The peaceful and conservative policy of the Democracy was des- 
tined to yield to one of a different character upon the advent of 
Ilamiltonianism to power in 1S60, under the assumed name of 
Republicanism. Prior to this time, the utterances of the leading 
men of the party had been very guarded as regards their inten- 
tions, and those of them who had the honesty and courage to 
express their real sentiments, were popularly viewed as enthusiasts 
and fanatics, who would possess no influence under the new gov- 
ernmental regime. Even Thaddeus Stevens himself, was re- 
garded as one of those extreme men whose opinions would never 



* " Wherever the seed of Abolitionism has been sown broadcast, a 
plentiful crop of infidelity has sprung up. In communities where Anti- 
Slavery excitement has been most prevalent, the power of the gospel has 
invariably declined ; and where the tide of fanaticism begins to subside, 
the wrecks of church order and of Christian character have been 
scattered on the shore. * * * The effect of abolitionism upon 
individuals is no less striking and mournful than its influence upon com- 
munities. It is a remarkable and instructive fa.ct, and one at which 
Christian men would do well to pause and consider, that in this country, 
all the prominent leaders of abolitionism, outside of the ministry, have 
become avowed infidels ; and that all our notorious abolition preachers 
have renounced the great doctrines of grace as they are taught in the 
standards of the reformed churches." — Sermon of Rev. J. Vandyke, of 
Brooklyn, New York Herald, December 10th, 1860. 



l„ 



223 A REVIE^V OF THE 

become the rule of tlie Tiepublican party. But the news of the 
election of Abraham Liueohi had scarcely flashed across the tele- 
graphic wires until a greater boldness of utterance was discernible 
in the columns of the Republican press. This party had won 
the political battle, and henceforth, inspired with contidence, they 
assumed the attitute of masters that must be entreated rather 
than menaced. The exiled monarch that had wandered in dis- 
guise, and in varied habits, since the people had elected Thomas 
Jeffei-son to the Presidential Chair, at once returned and ascended 
again the throne of his federal ancestors. The flat M'as imme 
diately issued to the magnates of power, that the principles of 
compromise should be suspended, and the maxims of Empire 
substituted. 

But, that the humble obeisance of the vassals might be secured, 
and a ready obedience to the orders of despotism guaranteed, a 
preliminary' course of instruction was required. The subjects so 
lono- inured to the policy of peace and democratic leniency, must 
be indoctrinated into the principles of the new school, and this 
without delay was undertaken. In reference to the secession 
commotion, the Eepublican press of the Xorth instead of discus- 
sing the reasons of Southern discontent, and the method to effect 
its aliayment, spoke of the powers of the Government, craftily 
therebv endeavoring to inflame the enthusiasm of the unreflect- 
ing masses, in behalf of national unity and the perpetuity of 
the Eepnblic. How captivatingly were the people admonished, 
that the first question to he decided, icas, ichether ice have a Gov- 
ernment or not. The Union was dear to the people of the Xorth, 
save to the abolitionists themselves, who had now succeeded in 
o-aining power under the Eepublican banner. The flrst aim of 
the leaders of the triumphant party, was to arouse the people to 
the danger by which the Union was threatened from Southern 
secession. By the haranguing of an inflamatory press, ]Srorthern 
sentiment was soon made almost unanimous against this dogma 
of the State's Eight School. ISTo name at this period was so poten- 
tial with the people as that of Andrew Jackson, whose famous 
declaration now formed the watch-word with the Constitution 
destructives, '■'■ the Federal Union, it vinsthe jJreserved.-'' Those 
seeking- to subvert the Constitution were now loudest in their 
cries for the preservation of the Union. 

Gen. Jackson in the nulMcation excitement had given ex- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AT^IERICA. 1^39 

pression, as has been seen, to iitterancec for wliich lie afterwards 
liacl cause sincerely to repent. No man ever filled the Presiden- 
tial Chair, who was subjected to more malignant abuse by that 
party which comprised in its ranks the monarchical or consolida- 
tion element of the country ; and yet when this same school 
succeeded in gaining political power in the government, the 
unstudied expressions of this much abused President, were re- 
hearsed before his admirers, by those who despised and vilified 
all his actions ; save the one in which he unfortunately erred, and 
which was contrary to the whole tenor of his political life, and to 
his subsequently expressed convictions. This same party whilst 
retailing the declarations of President Jackson, studiously avoided 
circulating the following extract from his fareAvell address to his 
countrymen : 

"It is well known that there has always been those among us who 
wish to enlarge tlie powers of the General Government ; and experience 
would seem to indicate that there is a tendency on the part of this Gov- 
ernment to over-step the boundaries marked out for it by the Constitu- 
tion. Its legitimate authority is abundantly sufficient for all the purposes 
for which it was created ; and its i)owers being expressly enumerated, 
there can be no justification for claiming anything beyond them. Every 
attempt to exercise power beyond these limits should be promptly and 
firmly opposed. For one evil example will lead to other measures still 
more mischievous ; and if the principle of consti'uctive powers, supposed 
advantages, or temporary circumstances shall ever be permitted to justify 
the assumption of a power not given by the Constitution, the General 
Government will before long absorb all the powers of legislation, and you 
will have in effect but one consolidated government. From the extent 
of our country, its diversified interests, different pursuits, and single 
habits, it is too obvious for argument that a single consolidated Govern- 
ment would be wholly inadequate to watch over and protect its interests ; 
and every friend of our free institutions should be always prepared to 
maintain, unimpaired and in full vigor, the rights and sovereignty of the 
States, and confine the action of the General Government strictly to the 
sphere of its appropriate duties."* 

The excitement throughout the country had become intense' 
upon the assembling of Congress in December, 1860. As soon 
as President Buchanan had submitted the views of the adminis- 
tration upon secession and coercion, the Pepublican press united 
in a general condemnation of the principles therein enunciated, 
and ridiculed the Executive as a coward and committed to the 
interests of treason. Assaults upon the peace policy of the ad- 
ministration, now became one of the means by which the Pepub- 

*Statesman's Manual, vol. 2, p. 953. 



2^'J A REVIEW OF THE 

liean leaders strove to intensify ISTortliern sentiment against 
tlie Sontliern j)eo2)le ; and prepare the masses for that bloody 
strife of sections which they found it necessary to foment m 
order to strengthen their own political power and crush that of 
their adversaries. When South Carolina at length seceded, the 
auroral star of the millenium seemed to rise upon the vision of 
those who had for upwards of a quarter of a century prayed for 
a dissolution of the Union. Wendel Phillips and his associate 
band of open and avowed Abolitionists, were in exstacies over 
the e^ ent. The harbinger of the new epoch was announced. 
The emancipators shouted huzzas when the convention of South 
Carolina had proclaimed secession. " Deck her with garlands — 
lade her with jewels," cried they ; " because she has gone, and 
God speed her on her journey." 

But the unavowed Abolitionists, Republicans in name. Eman- 
cipationists in principle, Wade, Hale, Stevens, and others, now 
found a glorious opportunity to assault the South, the administra- 
tion and the Democratic party in general. Compromise with 
traitors was ridiculed, and all members of the Kepublican party 
favoring a conservative j)olicy were denounced as derelict to the 
principles of the Chicago platform. The strong current that set 
in shortly after the election of Lincoln, in favor of compromise, 
had the effect of intimidating all but the boldest Kepublicans 
from expressing freely their designs as regards the coercion of the 
Southern States. John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, was one of 
the first who permitted it clearly to appear that it was determined 
by the Republican leaders to declare war against the seceded 
States. This announcement in the United States Senate embold- 
ened those editors of like opinions to utter their sentunents with 
less reserve ; and the Republican press from this period teemed 
with threats of coercion and condign punishment of the rebels. 
As early as December 20th, 1860, the Springfield Journal^ the 
presumed reflector of the views of Abraham Lincoln, the Presi- 
dent elect, gave utterance to the following sentiments: 

•' She (South Carolina) cannot get out of this Union until she conquers 
this Government. The revenues must and will be collected at her j)orts, 
and any resistance on her part veill lead to civil war." 

The following extract from the Kew York Herald, seems very 
truthfully to portray the Republican attitude at the time of its 
appearance : 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 231 

"Because Mr. Buchanan has adopted the peace policy, he is denovinced 
by the Republicans as a dotard, an imbecile, a traitor, and a lunatic. 
* * * The Republican journals of the North, are daily becoming 
more and more bitter in the tone of their belligerent manifestations, and 
in their vituperative advocacy of the extremest measures to reduce the 
slave States to submission to the doctrines laid down in the Chicago 
platform. Appeal to the inexora,ble logic or grooved cannon, Sharpe's 
rifles, and the bayonet, takes the place of reflection and argument now, 
just as cant, abuse, calumny and diatribe did that of truth and facts while 
they were arousing their readers to that pitch of Anti-Slavery excitement 
which has produced the present crisis. They demand that Mr. Lincoln 
shall inaugurate his administration with blocl- ides, bombardments and 
invasions, as flippantly and impudently as though the welfare of the 
country could be promoted by conformity to such diabolical fancies. 
They decree that the South shall be put down as glibly as if fifteen States 
were a vagrant to be arrested by the first policeman. With quasi author- 
itative language, they pretend to foreshadow the policy of the incoming 
administration as substituting the blood-red flag of civil war for the 
stars and stripes which float over the Capitol ; and confidently predict 
that the ' irrepressible conflict ' will be carried out with a ruthless bar- 
barity which John Brown himself would have hesitated to sanction. 

" The transparent motive of so much furious clamor on the part of the 
Republican press, is to drive Mr. Buchanan into initiating aggressive 
measures against South Carolina and any other States that may secede, 
in order that he and his administration may be charged with beginning 
the war. He is denounced for not sending troops to Moultrie and sur. 
rounding Charleston with a naval cordon. Should Buchanan accede to 
them, they would be the first to turn upon him the full vials of popular 
indignation, and charge him as responsible for beginning the war."* 

The tide of denimciation against President Buchanan and his 
peace policy, rose still higher and higher ; and broke upon the 
public ear in all its vindictive fury and tumultuousness. The 
roar of the Abolition press resounded throughout the whole 
length and breadth of the I^orth ; a partisan malignity seemed 
as if ready to engulph all reason and sobriety beneath the opening 
waves of the social convulsion. Henry Ward Beecher regretted 
that destiny had not vouchsafed to America, at this time, an 
Oliver Cromwell for President; and the Republican journals 
urged that in the imbecile attitude in which the country found 
itself, owing to the treasonable dereliction of the administration, 
it behooved the loyal States of the ISTorth to act with reference 
to the emergency and prepare for the coming crisis. Some of 
the Eepublican Governors called attention to the condition of the 
country and urged upon their Legislatures to place the military 

*New York Herald, Dec. 34th, 1860. 



233 A REVIEW OF THE 

iorces of tlieir States upon snch a footing as to be read j to respond 
when called upon bj the Federal authority. All these move- 
ments in the North served to indicate what the proposed policy 
of the incoming administration would be, as regards the seceded 
States. 

That it was the full intention of the Republican leaders after 
their elevation to power, to inaugurate coercive measures against 
such Southern States as might secede from the Union, admits of 
no reasonable doubt. And although William H. Seward and 
other members of the party, attempted to appear as conservative 
in their views, and willing to extend the olive branch of peace ; 
yet all these vascillating manoeuvres were simply designed to 
enable these diplomatists to veer between the Scylla of Aboli- 
tionism and the Charybdis of Conservatism. The ISTew York 
Senator had been selected as the premier of the incoming admin- 
istration ; and yet in view of the oj)position that existed against 
him in his own party, and the growing strength of the movement 
favorable to compromise, he esteemed it prudential to feign con- 
ciliatory sentiments ; and at the same time avoid committing 
himself to any delinite line of policy. By this means he sailed 
in the centre current of his own party and avoided touching the 
extremes. As regards personal popularity and promotion, he felt 
that this was altogether his safest method ; and at the same time 
he was sufficiently astute as to perceive that in times of commo- 
tion, the extremists of party always lead the Conservatives. In 
sentiment he either was or had ever feigned himself an extremist ; 
but he now chose to be led to that point, where in truth, he 
wished to conduct others. On the one hand his early radicalism 
allied him with the Abolition wmg of his party ; on the other, 
his sentiments as uttered in his speeches in the Senate and else- 
where, since the election of Lincoln, gained him the conhdence 
of the Compromisers ; and he therefore was prepared for leader- 
ship in the Cabinet, should public opinion even force a conserva- 
tive policy upon the new administration. 

Remembering that the Republican leaders almost unanimously 
resisted all compromise which might prove satisfactory to the 
Southern people, was it not apparent in view of events that one 
of two things must occur, either a dissolution of the Union, or 
civil war to prevent it ? Must it not then be accepted as an un- 
deniable truth that they preferred either of these results, rather 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 233 

tlian acquiesce in a compromise l And yet they souglit to evade 
these logical inferences which necessarily flowed from their words 
and actions. But the popular mind was unable to detect the real 
aim of those who despised the old Union, and who simply sought 
to arouse the IsTorthern jDeople to fight in its defense, in order 
that they might effect its destruction. 

An ominous silence was maintained by Abraham Lincoln as to 
the policy which would be pursued after the Government came 
into his hands. For over thre& months after his election not a 
word was spoken by the new President that served clearly to 
indicate what his future policy would be. This silence was main- 
tained in oi'der that he might be free to accept that guidance 
which the controling opinon of his party might indicate. It 
can not be doubted, but that he with other leaders of the party, 
had fully agreed upon a course of action after his accession to 
the Chair of State, and time simply was permitted to determine 
whether the proposed plan could be executed or not. And this 
silence was simply a part of the revolutionary programme, which 
from the organization of the Republican party it was impolitic 
and politically dangerous to disclose. It was not believed by 
the Southern leaders, and by many in the North, that there was 
doubt as to the course the new administration would pursue 
when once installed in power. The unanminity of the Republican 
party, favoring the coercion of the seceded States by military power, 
made it sufficiently clear what the policy of the Lincoln Admin- 
istration would be. This unaminity was but the echo of the well 
understood views and expressions of Members of Congress and 
other leaders of Republican opinion. Any one, at all attentive to 
the discussions which took place in the Senate and House of 
Representatives during the second session of the Thirty-sixth 
Congress, would have shown remarkable obtuseness not to have 
discovered, that war was the policy determined upon by the 
Republican leaders. The following extract would seem to indi- 
cate that the sentiment on this point was almost unanimous: 

" The Republican leaders and journalists, with one or two exceptions, 
insist upon holding the Chicago platform, the whole platform, and noth- 
ing but the platform, no matter what may be the consequences to the 
party, the country, or the human race. * * * * They de- 
clare tliey will maintain it to the bitter end, though civil war should be 
the consequence."'* 

* New York Herald, January 21st, 1861. 



£04 A REVIEW OF THE 

Tlie great difficnltj, with wliicli tlie Eepnlblican leaders had to 
contend, was the growing current of conservatism that set in after 
the Presidential election in ISTovember, 1860, and which flowed 
in opposition to their wishes, and which tliej feared might bear 
their revolutionary bark upon the rocks of political disaster. 
This current showed itself in the numerous petitions that flooded 
Congress in favor of compromise W'jth the South, in the mani- 
fest changes which marked the local elections in many sections 
of the North, and also in the breaking up of Abolition assem- 
blages and John Brown demonstrations, which six months before 
had been popular and held without interruption. It was the 
general belief of all the conservative classes, that the troubles 
likely to burst upon the country had been produced by the fanati- 
cal agitation of the slavery question, and respectable citizens, in 
different places, aided in dispersing meetings of Abolitionists, 
believing that such were but gathering additional fuel for the 
flames of civil discord now threatening to consume the fair fabric 
of the American Republic. But this popular opposition only 
served the more to intensify the efforts of the whole radical 
school of the Republican party ; unite the better in one com- 
pact band, the avowed and secret Abolitionists, and give this 
faction the leadership and entire control of the political ma- 
chinery of the organization. "Wendel Phillips, Beecher, Sumner, 
Hale, Hickman, Howard, Stevens, Lovejoy and others were com- 
pactly united together in a band of brotherhood, pledged by 
mutual consent to unite their forces in a general assault upon the 
citadel of State Rights and Southern Slavery. It was soon 
manifest that the radicals were master of the situation, and 
Thurlow Weed * and other Republicans who had advocated com- 
promise were threatened with ostracism for the their opinions. 
Even the editor of the ISTew York Trihune, the pretended 
staunch advocate of principle, after having declared in favor of 
peaceable secession, was compelled by the radical conclave to 
espouse the policy of coercion against the seceded States. And 
after peraiitting himself to be made the mere mouthpiece of the 



* " Thurlow Weed has been denounced and his peace propositions repu- 
diated by the journals and leaders of the Republican i^arty." Movements 
were even made to start a new paper in Albany opposed to him, and 
which the leaders promise shall be conducted " unthoiit temporizing con- 
cessions and vacillating expediencies." — New York Herald, December 17, 
1860. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 235 

ruling faetion, lie, to whom tlie editorial fraternity gave tlie 
name of philosopher, became the bitterest amongst his country- 
men in resisting a compromise with the Southern people, and the 
most ardent in hounding on the masses of the North to a conflict 
that must work the prostration of the principles of Free Govern 
ment, and the downfal of the Constitutional Union. 

At length the pilgrimage of the new President, from his home 
in Springfield, Illinois, to Washington, began on the 11th of 
February, ISGl ; and the people of all sections of the country 
now looked with anxiety for a disclosure of the views of the man, 
who more than all others held the future destiny of the Union 
in his hands. But the country was sadly disappointed. At a 
time when double-dealing should have been laid aside, and when 
manhood and honor demanded a clear and explicit declaration of 
the future int<5utions of the Chief Magistrate, we lind him in 
his speeches made to the crowds that flocked to see him, giving 
utterance to ambiguous expressions ; and such as but served to 
conceal his real intentions. His home organ, the Springfield 
Journal^ about the time of his departure for the Seat of Govern- 
ment, contained the following enunciation of policy, which doubt- 
less expressed the intentions of the journeying President : but 
which State craft and perfidy would not permit him openly to dis- 
close. The Journal said : 

" The seceding States are in rebellion against the Federal Government, 
and it is the duty of this Government to put down i-ebellion. Away with 
compromises. We should not talk of compromises while the flag of 
traitors floats over an American Fort, and the flag of our country trails in 
the dust. Until that flag is unfurled over Moultrie and every other stolen 
Fort, Arsenal, Custom House and Navy Yard — until the laws of this 
Government are obeyed and its authority recognized, let us never talk 
of compromise. Let the stolen Forts, Arsenals and Navy Yards be re- 
stored to the rightful owners, — tear down your rattlesnake and pellican 
flags, and run up the ever glorious stars and stripes, — disjierse your 
traitorous mobs and let every man returzi to his duty."* 

But the only competency shown by the New President on his 
journey to Washington, was the proficiency he displayed in the 
science of Machiavelism, by which he was enabled to discourse to 
the people concerning the brewing troubles, and yet conceal from 
them his opinions. Otherwise his speeches gave no evidence of 
intellect ; but were interspersed with the flimsey jests of the low 



^Extracted in New York Herald, Feb. 14, 1861. 



£33 A EEVIEW OF THE , 

politician, altogether uTibecoming the man that was chosen to 
succeed the honored statesmen, who, from Washington to Bu- 
chanan, had graced the Presidential Cliair. In liis harrangues to 
the crowds which intercepted him on his journey, at a time Vvdien 
the country was in revolutionary chaos; when commerce and 
trade were prostrated, and when starving women and idle men 
were among the very audiences that listened to him, he declared 
to them, in his peculiar phraseology, that ^^ nobody was hnrt,^^ 
that " all would come out right^'' and that there was " nothing 
going wrongT Nor was his rhetoric the only entertainment he 
afforded those who flocked to hear the new Sovereign. 

His conduct and speeches disclosed the demagogue ; and evinced 
his admirable adaptedness to Lc the President of the radical con- 
clave, that was to dictate to him as a subaltern the duties required 
of him to be performed. As President, he was the creature of 
and for the occasion. He was chosen in revolutionary times, for 
revolutionary purposes, and by the revolutionary element of the 
country. Statesmanship was at a discount ; the destructive in 
politics ruled, and reason and reflection must of necessity be laid 
^side. A conservative President was not wanted by the men 
who controlled affairs in the new party ; and Lincoln was known 
to be of that pliable disposition which would allow himself and 
his policy to drift with the current. 

In his Indianapolis speech, the touring President sufficiently 
disclosed his sentiments for esoteric ears, but which the uninitiated 
mass accepted simply as interrogatories. He said : 

" If the United States should merely hold and retake its own Forts and 
other property, and collect the duties on foreign importations, or even 
withhold the mails from places where they are habitually violated, 
would any of these things be invasion on coercion ? Would the march- 
ing of an army into South Carolina be invasion T 

By these and many other similar remarks, it was ascertained 
that coercion had been determined upon by the radical Eepub- 
licans. Senator Chandler, during the last days of the Thirty- 
sixth Congress, declared that the Republican party were ready to 
stand in hlood. Pessenden, of Maine, remarked "that if the 
time was coming to use force, he was perfectly ready to do it." 
Thaddeus Stevens, in the course of the debate npon the Navy 
Bill, expressed it to be the intention of his party to retake tlie 
Southern forts.* A volume might be tilled with similar declara- 



«■ New York Herald, February 23nd, 1861. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 237 

tioiis, all to the same purport, showing that civil war was the 
pre-deterinined policy of the radical school. 

The first distinct enunciation by Abraham Lincoln of the 
course he w^ould pursue ay^s made in his inaugural address, wherein 
he says : 

''Ic follows from these views that no State, upon its own mere motion, 
can lawfully get out of the Union ; that resolves and ordinances to that 
effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or 
States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary, 
according to circumstances. 

"I, therefore consider, that in view of the Constitution and the Laws, 
the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, 
as the Constitution expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union 
shall be faithfully executed in all the States. 

"In doing this there need be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall 
be none unless it be forced upon the national authority." 

Did despot ever lay down more dogmatic and authorative 
dicta than are contained in the exti-acted portion of this inaugural ? 
Without condescending to consider the alleged grievances of 
the Southern people, or recommend any terms of concession,' as 
a wise and virtuous ruler, master of his own thoughts, would 
have done, the Republican President proceeds in one sentence to 
declare State Sovereignty, the cardinal doctrine of the Jeffer- 
sonian school of politics, as baseless and unfounded. Was greater 
presumption ever manifested ? The matured thought of a whole 
school of distinguished American statesmen was not to be over- 
thrown by the mere declaration of a man, whom accident rather 
than intellect had elevated to power. But presumptuousness 
and conceit were the characteristics of the party to which he was 
indebted for the position he occupied, and he must necessarily 
display a similar pretentiousness with that of his compeers. 

He next declared that he would cause the laws of the Union 
to be faithfully executed, as the Constitution expressly enjoins^ 
which to the American ear was more palatable, than to have told 
them what he meant, which was that he and his party had deter- 
mined to conquer by military force the Southern States. But 
the Constitution did not permit, much less enjoin him to make 
war upon the seceding States in order to preserve the laws, and 
purposing to do so, as his party leaders had resolved, he falsely 
accepted his obligation to the Constitution, which he pretended 
to obey. But a part of the secret programme still remained to 
be performed. This consisted in sending a naval squadron, under 



C33 A REVIEW OF THE 

tlie j^rotence of relieving tlie Southern garrisons, when in truth 
designed to provoke an attack upon the American flag, and thus 
obtain a pretext for declaring war against the South, under the 
plea of defending the Union. This scheme, which was ci'aftily 
planned, was entirely successful, and on the 12th of April, 1861, 
the attack upon Fort Sumpter lighted up the flames of civil 
revolution, and the triumph of centralization was now assm-ed. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 239 



CHAPTER XrV. 



WAR FOR THE UNION. 



The news of tHe attack on Fort Siimpter aronsed the demon of 
the ISTorth, in all his ferocious hate and unreasoning madness. 
Itevenge, deep and bitter, was resolved upon in every hamlet and 
village from the most remote corner of Maine to the fm-thest 
extremity of California. The Southern secessionists who had 
dared to question the National authority and lire upon the flag 
of the Republic, became at once in the public mind, the objects of 
malediction and of the most burning execration ; and resolves of 
vengeance seemed for the time written upon nearly every coun- 
tenance. Insanity, in truth, ruled the hour. It was a people at 
length fully awakened to a realization of the dangers, of which 
they had often been admonished, but which they as repeatedly had 
been assured, were groundless and without foundation. Like a 
mob destitute of that reflection by which it should weigh causes 
and consequences, the people were everywhere borne in blind zeal 
to oppose resistance to the immediate agent of their dread. The 
Government was threatened ; the Southern people had turned 
their cannon upon a Federal Fortress and forced its evacuation ; 
and all the sacred associations of the Union, Constitution and 
National integrity were jeoparded. At once they forgot the 
lesson of philosophy, that " the aggressor in a war is not the first 
who uses force, but the first who renders force necessary."* 

Although the people 'of the North had been admonished by 
patriots and Statesmen, from Washington to Buchanan, that the 
formation and success of sectional parties could not but endanger 
the perpetuity of the American Republic ; still all their counsel 
was rejected and their admonitions unheeded. Men had arisen 
who repudiated the wisdom of former generations ; and who had 
succeeded in securing followers, a majority in the Northern 



'Hallam's Constitutional History, 



S4y A REVIEW OF THE 

States. The most studied efforts had been made by leading He- 
publicans, in tlieir speeches and through their presses, to convince 
the people that the object of the Southern secessionists was to extort 
from a passive ISTorth, further guarantees for slavery, as they had 
succeeded in doing on former occasions. And they were also 
told that even should actual resistance occur ; and the South be 
found to be in earnest in their determination to sever their con- 
nection with the Union by force of arms, the collision would 
prove one of short duration ; and that a month, or at furthest, 
Jiinety days would end the struggle. Believing these declara- 
tions, the mass of both political parties in the N^orth, regarded 
the suppression of the rebellion as an undertaking of no great 
difficulty. 

l^ow was the opportunity for the deep, crafty schemes of 
Abolition consolidation ; and with admirable adroitness was it 
seized. With a full knowledge of the delusion which reigned in 
the public mind, as regarded the rebellion, and for the purpose of 
still further strengthening this false impression, Abraham Lin- 
coln, as President of the United States, on the 15th of April, 
1861, issued his proclamation calling for seventy-live thousand 
men to suppress the insurrection in the seceded States. Assuni- 
ino- to treat the Southern revolt as mere insurrectionary resist- 
ance, he ordered the seceders to disperse in twenty days froni 
the issue of his mandate. Will posterity ever give him credit 
for believing that the rebels would disperse at his bidding, or 
that his quota of soldiers would prove sufficient to overthrow the 
armed resistance of the South ? If matured reflection shall 
satisfy coming ages that the role he played on this occasion was 
not an hyjwcritical one, then the only alternative to be accejjted 
will be, that his party made a great mistake in selecting one of no 
superior sagacity for President of the United States.* 

The idea promulgated at Washington of a ninety days' com- 
motion was encouraged by the JSTorthern press, with the same 



*Tlie great admirers of the Sage of Springfield, in justification of tlie 
call for seventy-five thousand men for tnree months, will attempt to de- 
fend him in asserting that he acted in accordance with the law of 171)5, 
in callin"- out the mUitia and ordering the dispersal of the insurgents in a 
specified'^time. It is ti'ue that he did model his call for troops after an 
Act which contemplated simply the raising of armed j^osses, in aid of 
the civil authorities. In doing so, however, he disclosed the desperate 
length that he and his party were ready to go for the purpose of carrying 
out their designs. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 241 

design as liad influenced the Executive Chief in the Federal 
Capitol. It was all done to continue the deception that had been 
practised from the organization of the EepuHjlican party. TJie 
rebellion was derided as a matter of mere insiij-niiicance, and 
belittled in language which no sane men but imposters could 
utter. The New York Tribune, the leading organ of the Re- 
publican party, declared that it was nothing " more or less than 
the natural recourse of all mean spirited and defeated tyrannies, 
to rule or ruin, making of course a wide distinction between the 
wdll and power, for th hanging of traitors is sure to begin before 
one month is over. The nations of Europe," it continued, " may 
rest assured that Jeff. Davis & Co., will be swinging from the 
battlements at Washington at least by the 4th of July. AYe spit 
upon a later and longer deferred justice." 

The New York Times expressed the following confident 
opinion : 

" Let us make quick work. The ' Rebellion,' as some people designate 
it, is an embryo tadpole. Let us not fall into the delusion, noted by 
Hallam, of mistaking a ' local commotion ' for a revolution. A strong, 
active pull together vi'ill do our work effectually in thirty days. 
We have only to send a column of twenty -five thousand men across the 
Potomac to Richmond, and burn out the rats there ; another column of 
twenty-five thousand to Cairo, seizing the cotton ports of the Mississippi, 
and retaining the remaining twenty-five thousand included in Mr. Lin- 
coln's call for seventy-five thousand men at Washington, not because 
there is need for them there, but because we do not require their services 
elsewhere." ^ 

The Philadelphia Press declared that no man of sense, could 
for a moment doubt, that this much-ado-about-nothing would end 
in a month. The Northern people were " simply invincible." 
" The rebels," it predicted, " a mere band of ragamuffins, will 
fly like chaff before the wind on our approach." 

The people of the West in no wise flagged in their competency 
to depreciate the magnitude of the troubles that awaited the 
country. ' It was necessary for the political success of the Re- 
publican party to under-rate the impending evils that were 
threatening the nation ; for had the people fully realized the 
magnitude of the undertaking they were entering upon, the Peace 
party would have been too potential to have permitted the inau- 
guration of the carnage that was to drench the land in blood. 
The Chicago Tribune, the valorous sheet of the Lake City, in- 
sisted that alone and unaided, the West should be permitted to 



243 A REVIEW OF THE 

figlit tlie battle tliroiigh, since slie was probably most interested 
in the suppression of the rebellion and the free navigation of the 
Mississippi. " Let the East," demanded this warlike organ, " get 
out of the way ; this war is of the West. AYe can light the 
battle and successfully, within two or three months at the furthest. 
Illinois can whip the South by herself. We insist upon the 
matter being turned over to us." 

Horace Greeley, the editor of the ISTew York Tribune^ who 
skillfully performed his part in helping to deceive the masses of 
the North into the belief that the rebellion would melt away in 
sixty days, was willing, however, to be judged in history as an 
impostor rather than a fool. In his history of the war he says : 

" The original call of President Lincoln on the States for 75,0C0 militia, 
to cerve for three months, was a deplorable error. It resulted natui-ally 
from 'that obstinate infatuation which would believe in defiance of all 
history and probability, that an aristocratic consi^iracy of thirty years 
standing, culminating in rebellion based on an artificial property valued 
at four thousand millions of dollars, and wielding the resources of ten 
or twelve States, having nearly ten millions of people, was to be put 
down in sixty or ninety days by some process equivalent to the reading 
of the Riot Act to an excited mob, and sending a squad of police to dis- 
perse it."* 

After the fall of Sumpter, it was indeed esteemed disloyal to 
even intimate a doubt of the speedy overthow of the rebellion- 
Many a patriotic citizen was branded as a traitor, because his 
reason admonislied him that the conquest of a peoj^le so united 
as were the Southern Confederates, would be an undertaking requir- 
ing years, and also vast outlays of blood and treasure. Many, 
who in other matters were endowed with excellent sense, either 
really agreed with the short-sighted rabble in believing that the 
South would soon be conquered, or for the sake of selfish interests 
permitted themselves to drift with the current of public opinion. 

Such an apparent change of sentiment as took place upon the 
fall of Sumpter, perhaps never was before witnessed in any 
country. JSTewspaper editors, who up to tins period had battled 
the positions of the Abolition party, and pointed out the dangers 
into which their anti-compromise policy would drift the country, 
shifted their positions without delay into the advocacy of war 
against the South. Notwithstanding they had contended that 
the coercion of the seceding States was altogether unconstitutional, 



*Greeley's American Conflict. Vol. 1, p. 551. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. S43 

yet in obedience to selfish, aspirations, or induced by fears of mob 
violence, war for the Union was now urged by tliem with as 
much vehemence and zeal as before had been conciliation. 
Other leading citizens, who before had been prominent and 
influential members of the Democratic and old Whig parties ; 
and who had never sympathised with the abolition movement, 
immediately changed positions ; and permitted themselves to be 
made instruments of fanaticism to unite the North in a war 
against the Southern people and their institutions. Democratic 
ex-Governors, Mayors, Members of Congress and other influential 
men of the ]3arty, presided at war meetings, and thus lent their 
aid and encouragement to the war party. Daniel S, Dickinson, 
of New York, who had even enjoyed the reputation of a 
" Northern man with Southern principles," became one of the 
fiercest advocates of war, and consigned his former friends in 
the South to fire and sword. Edward Everett, the scholarly 
orator of New England, who a few months before declared that 
the Southern States should be permitted to secede in peace, be- 
came an apostle of coercion, and exhausted his beautiful rhetoric 
in proclaiming the new gospel of subjugation. The conversions 
of this character were remarkably abundant, indeed; and men of 
all professions and occupations received the outpouring of the 
war spirit, and became new creatures in their whole walk and 
conversation. No doubt their olfactories scented the sweet per- 
fumes of power, and they forgot the past in anticipations of the 
future. So manifest and mighty was the change that had been 
wrought, that the unregenerate could but look with amazement 
upon the scenes in which their eyes and ears were unable to 
deceive them. 

The crusade of passion, fury and blasphemy, which set in 
against the South is entirely undescribable. It would have 
seemed as if the fiends of Pandemonium had burst forth from 
their cojifines and were exciting the frenzied multitudes of the 
North to deeds of hate and cruelty. The infidel clergy of New 
England, and their pious bretliern of the modern ecclesiastical 
schools, feasted their souls in the hol_y anticipations of humani- 
tarian elevation, throu^ih the blood and earnao-e of their Northern 
and Southern countrymen. The holiness of the war was pro- 
claimed from the pulpit as well as from the hustings. Dr. Tyng, 
a distinguished divine of New York, assembled certain ferocious 



244 A REVIEW OF THE 

cut-throats of that city, commonly known as " Billy Wilson's 
men," presented them bibles, and declared to them that in carry- 
ing tire and sword into the rebellious States they would propitiate 
Heaven, and would go far to assure the salvation of their souls. 
Were the dark ages ever guilty of more ungodlike and unchris- 
tian abomination ? But this is but an illustration of the senti- 
ments that were popular and lauded to the skies throughout the 
Korthem States. 

A like madness seized the peoj^le in their seeming adoration of 
the flag of their country. The national emblem was flung to tho 
breeze in nearly every street of the ISTorthern towns and cities ; 
and floated from the house-tops and windows of the m.ost intensely 
loyal of the people. When these signs of war ardor made no 
voluntary appearance from a residence, a committee of patriotic 
citizens often deemed it their duty to admonish the inmates that 
a token of loyalty should be displayed. Some few bold men, 
however, who claimed to have opinions of their own, and who 
believed that they still lived in a free country, refusing to be 
driven into an apparent endorsement of an inquitous and uncon- 
stitutional war, declined to display any other insignia of patriot- 
ism than the laws of their country demanded. But those 
manifesting such independence, in all cases did so at the risk of 
life, property, business and reputation; and were sure to be 
branded as sympathisers with treason and desirous of seeing the 
Government overthrown.* 

Up to this period in the history of the country, one oath to 
support the Constitution of the United States was deemed suf- 
ticient ; but this opinion also underwent a change at the outbreak 
of the rebellion. Men whose intelligence and self-respect should 
have shielded them from the commission of acts only designed 
to win popular applause, permitted themselves to assume the 
patriotic attitude of moving that all the members of their bar 
renew their official oaths, and swear, more flrmly than ever, that 
they would support the Federal Constitution. An instance of 
this superflous swearing was enacted in the Court Eoom in Lan- 



*The portraits of Isaac Toucey, of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy 
under James Buchanan, of C. L. Vallandingham, and otlier eminent 
Democrats of the North, were placed in the Rogue's Gallery of New York 
with the design of blackening their reputations with tlie unthinking 
masses. And journals like the New York Tribune endorsed such malig- 
nant partisan conduct as highly becoming and creditable. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 245 

caster Citj, one morning after the reduction of Fort Sumpter ; 
and done at the instance of Benjamin Champnejs and seconded 
by Thaddens Stevens. What a prostitution of the sacredness of 
an oath to attempt to render that more binding which was already- 
sealed before Heaven as the holiest obligation which humanity is 
capable of attesting. The annals of the French revolution would 
be scanned in vain for an instance of greater mockery of sacred 
solemnities. 

It is not strange, that with the prospect of a short war, given 
out from Washington and encouraged by the whole Republican 
press, the rage for volunteering would be immense. Going to 
the war for three months, under the first call of Abraham Lincoln, 
was viewed as a sort of holiday excursion ; and had peculiar at- 
tractions for large numbers of the fast youth in the ^N^orthern 
cities. From this material it was boasted that the North could 
gather the most terrible and invincible army that ever enacted 
deeds of war. Some of these adopted the Zouave costume in 
order to gratify their desire for singularity, and add to their fero- 
cious aj)pearance ; and a company of them even went through the 
ceremony of being sworn, in a public hotel in ISTew York, to " cut 
off the head of every d secessionist in the war." Such exhi- 
bitions of ferocity were retailed with glee and devoured with the 
most gratifying satisfaction by the most saintly advocates of the 
war. These valiant defenders of liberty were extolled for their 
burning patriotism, after having plundered the stores of some 
sympathizers with treason ; and prostrated the persons of others 
who presumed to question their inalienable right to act as they 
saw p.-oper in the city of their birth. They were simply giving 
evidence of the manner they could handle Southern traitors ; and 
these experiments upon Northern sympathizers afforded the 
p-reatast satisfaction to their admirers. These acts were retailed 
with the most fiendish pleasure by the Loyalists, as they termed 
themselves, and were cited as proof that the crusading army from 
the North would strike terror into the secession bands, and win 
the brightest and bloodiest laurels on the fields of battle. 

But it was not the vagrant and unrully classes of the Northern 
cities alone that enrolled themselves in the war for the Union ; 
the quiet and orderly young merchants, clerks, printers, farmers 
and others, entered the race for glory. The North was full of 
martial courage, and war ardor animated both rich and poor. 



243 A EEVIEW OF THE 

Gov. Dennison, of Ohio, telegraphed to Washington, tendering 
thirty thousand troops for the service. Weston, tlie Governor of 
Indiana, received assurances that a lil^e number of soldiers was 
ea^er for enlistment in his State. A. G. Curtin, the Executive 
of Pennsylvania, was not to be outdone in his promises to the 
Washington authorities. Massachusetts and 'New York were 
pressing in their offers of men for " the three months war." 

The deceptions conduct of Abraham Lincoln and his coun- 
sellors, gradually displayed itself as time advanced. The second 
call of the President of May 4th, ISGl, for forty-two thousand 
volunteers, for three years or during the war, besides the twenty- 
two thousand called for at the same time for the regular army, 
and eighteen thousand seamen, would on its face seem to evince 
that the Federal authorities had rapidly changed their views as 
regards the magnitude of the conflict that was to be encountered. 
The truth, however, simply was that the administration feared to 
alarm the country by calling at first for a large force of volun- 
teers, until the sections had become so far involved in the strife 
as to preclude all further efforts of the Peace party at accommo- 
dation. This is clear from the endeavors which were quietly 
made to induce the three months' soldiers, soon after their enrol- 
ment, to re-enlist for three years, even under pain of dishonorable 
dismissal from the army. The Lancaster Exj^ress correspondent 
of May 15th, 1861, says : 

" The call was for three months, but we are now asked to serve for 
three j^ears ; should we decline the latter proposition, we are told that we 
will be discharged in such a way as not to leave the service with honor." 

So great had been the willingness of the administration to 
enroll a large army, and one much greater even than its several 
calls would indicate that by the middle of June, 18G1, it v/as 
estimated that the number of men already in the Government 
service amounted to 308,875. 

But an administration that was inaugurating a policy in viola- 
tion of solemn obligation and constitutional warrant, and striving 
for the utter overthrow of Eepublican Government, was not one 
to hesitate at any stage of perhdy, that might be required for the 
accomplishment of its designs. It was but in harmony, there- 
fore, with a well-matured and pre-arranged programme when 
President Lincoln, in the presence of Gen. Scott and his Cabinet, 
and in conflict with his proclamation calling for 75,000 men^ 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 247 

solemnly assured the Mayor of .Baltimore and other leading 
men of that city, that the troops called for were simply for the 
protection of the Federal Capital. Of this assm-ance Mayor 
Brown said : 

" The protection of "Wasliington he (the President) asseverated with 
great earnestiiess, was the sole object of concentrating troops there, and 
he protested that none of the troops brought through Maryland were in- 
tended for any purposes hostile to the State, or aggressive as against the 
Southern States."* 

That "William H. Seward was well skilled in the tortuous ways 
of perfidious diplomacy, and admirably suited to be the colleague 
of a President who would deny his public record and intentions, 
no evidence from Judge Campbell was needed to determine. 
The Premier's letter to Governor Hicks, of Maryland, furnishes 
abundant testimony on this point. With reference to the passage 
of the troops through Baltimore, he wrote a letter to the Gov- 
ernor, April 22d, in which he says : 

"The force now sought to be brought through Maryland is intended 
for nothing but the defense of the Capitol." 

Horace Greeley, the editor of the Tribune, perceiving the 
bald untruth of the Secretary's declaration, and with reference 
to it, said : 

"Is this true ? Is it safe ? It certainly is not very consistent with the 
President's Proclamation, which Governor Seward countersigned. The 
militia of the loyal States were called out to suppress combinations that 
defy the laws and obstruct their execution — not in Washington, but in 
the disloyal States. Having reached Washington, they are several hun- 
dred miles on their way to those States — not to speak of the rebellion 
that has suddenly broken out in Virginia and Maryland. Having drawn 
men enough to Washington to repel the apprehended attack, is it prob- 
able that they will be sent home without even attempting to effect the 
object for which they were expressly called out? And if not, will not 
the Government be accused of bad faith in giving the assurances em- 
bodied in Governor Seward's letter, and then acting in defiance of them ?"!• 

The War against the seceded States was inaugurated by Abra- 
ham Lincoln and his party, for the purpose as they declared of 
preserving the integrity of the Union. But the maintenance of 
a Union and Constitution that guaranteed the existence of slavery 
could not be desired by any save a hyprocritcal member of a 
party, whose animating principle was opposition to the Southern 
institution. Every sincere and honest leader in the Republican 

'■^Annual Cyclopo&dia, 1881, n. 717. 
\ New York Tribune, April 26th, 18G1. 



248 A REVIEW OF THE 

organization, had avowed tlie mission of liis party to be tlio 
eradication of Southern Slavery, and it was left to state craft 
and deception to devise a policy which could carry to its support 
sufficient strength to accomplish the party aim. Had not Abra- 
liam Lincoln and the members of his Cabinet, repeatedly declared 
their antipathy to the institution of slavery, and that its existence 
was incomj)atible with republican institutions? And yet when 
war was proclaimed, did not these same statesmen avow that the 
object of the administration was simply to preserve the Union 
and the Constitution, and that the destruction of slavery was 
altogether out of their power and foreign from their intentions ? 
On the contrary, however, the honest and manly avowals of 
Wendel Phillips, Gerrit Smith and others, proved that the 
administration was sailing under false colors in order to catch 
the popular gale. In his spec jh of Ajr'l 2Tth, Gerrit Smith said: 
" The end oi slavery is at hand. If we suffer it to live, ifc may return 
to torment us. Let no Northern man henceforth propose, for any reasons 
whatever, the spai'ing of slavery. Such measure, such insult, such con- 
tempt of her interests and rights and honor, the North will stand no 
longer. Thank God ! the spirit of the North is at last aroused at this 
point. She is determined to kill slavery, and she will be patient with no 
man who shall thrust himself between her and her victim."* 

With the above compare the following words from Abraham 
Lincoln's inaugural : 

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the insti- 
tution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful 
right to do so ; and I have no inclination to do so." 

Which of these two men, will posterity determine, expressed 
most sincerely and honestly his convictions ? Which of them 
must forever bear the brand of hypocrite upon his brow, and be 
enrolled in the category of those who deserve the execration of 
mankind ? 

Influenced with the same design as President Lincoln, his Sec- 
retary of State, William H. Seward, in his letter of instructions, 
in April, 1861, to the Federal Minister in Paris, says : 

" The condition of slavery in the several States will remain just the 
same, whether it (the rebellion) succeeds or fails. The rights of the 
States, and the condition of every human being in them, will remain 
subject to exactly the same laws and form of administration, whether 
the revolution shall succeed or whether it shall fail. Their Constitutions 
and foims and customs, habits and institutions, in either case will remain 

*New York Tribune, May 3d, 1861. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 249 

the same. It is ha'-dly necessary to add to this incontestible statement, 
tlie further fact that the new President, as well as the citizens through 
Avhose suffrages he lias come into the administration, has always repudi- 
ated all designs whatever and wherever imputed to hini and them, of 
disturbing the institution of slavery as it is existing under the Constitu- 
tion and laws, The case however, would not be fully presented were I 
to omit to say, that any such effort on his part would be vinconstitutional, 
and all his acts in that direction would be prevented by the judicial au- 
thority, even though they were assented to by Congress and the people." 

But the political Abolition editor of the New York Tribune 
discloses the reason which detered the administration from allow- 
ing the war to appear as waged for the destruction of slavery. 
He says : 

" This war in tnith is a war for the preservation of the Union — not for 
the destruction of slavery ; and it would alienate many ardent Unionists 
to pervert it into a war against Slavery."* 

This humane editor and would-be philosopher, this ^oise and 
sagacious statesman, like the administration, through dread of 
antagonizing the conservatives of the country, declares that the 
war is prosecuted for the preservation of the Union ; and yet, in 
an issue of four da3^s earlier, he eulogizes Daniel S. Dickinson, 
who had advocated the extermination of the Southern people in 
order to eradicate slavery, the germinating root of the revolt. It 
was this philosophic editor who iirst of all the members of his 
party most clearly explained the policy of the administration war 
for the Union ; and, calmed by the following arguments, the 
complaints of those who early demanded that it should be 
directed for the emancipation of the Southern slaves. The war 
for the Union, argued he, is sure to ultimate in the destruction of 
slavery, and therefore it behooves all Abolitionists to give it their 
support. Do not strive to have emancipation proclaimed, for by 
doing so many friends of the Union will be turned into enemies 
of the war, which Avill only procrastinate the overthrow of the 
Southern institution. Let those fight for the Union who will, 
for in doing so they likewise aid the cause of emancipation. 
Many patriots do not desire the liberation of the slaves, and it 
is necessary, therefore, that the war be waged in behalf of the 
Union and the Constitution ; and in this manner the enemies of 
emancipation really aid the movement of abolition. "We who 
perceive the results to follow the war, favor it because of these ; 

*New York Tribune, May 14th, 1861. 



250 A REVIEW OF THE 

and lience both Unionists and Abolitionists can unite in its prose- 
cution. This, in brief, was the whole secret and philosophy of 
the Abolition enthusiasm in the war for the Union. 

The iirst acts of the Federal authority, in the prosecution of 
the war touching the institution of slavery, were made to con- 
form strictly to the assurances that had been given. An extrav- 
agant zeal was shown by Federal officials to prove that the war 
was prosecuted alone for the restoration of the Union. Fugitive 
slaves were not only arrested within the Federal military lines 
and returned to slavery, but were taken in the streets of Wash- 
ington and surrendered by judicial process to their masters. On 
the 26tli of May, 18G1, General McClellan issued an address to 
the people of Western Virginia, assuring them that not only 
would his troops abstain from any interference with their slave 
property, but that they were ready likewise to assist in quelling 
any efforts at servile insurrection. General McDowell issued an 
order prohibiting fugitive slaves from coming into, or being har- 
bored within his lines. All these acts were permitted by the 
Federal administration, in order to disprove the assertion of the 
Southern people, and of those in the i'Torth who charged the 
Hepublicans as secretly designing the overthrow of slavery. 

But the administration and the Republican leaders awaited 
with impatience for an opportunity to allow the commencement 
of that line of policy which was to ultimate in the entire over- 
throw of slave institutions. The war had been inaugurated for 
the avowed maintenance of the Union and the Constitution; 
but other aims animated most of the sincere friends of the 
coercive policy. The first opportunity which permitted a change 
of base for the administration, was furnished by General B. F. 
Butler, a former member of the Democratic party, and one high 
in its confidence. Some fugitives had made their way into the 
camp of General Butler at Fortress Monroe ; and being demanded 
by an officer of a Confederate force in the neighborhood, Butler 
declined to surrender these ; choosing to consider them contra- 
band of war, as being the property of rebels. He placed the 
able-bodied negroes at work upon his fortifications, and immedi- 
ately notified the War Department of his action as regards the 
fugitives. Other fugitives, men, women and children, shortly 
afterwards came to his camp, and he now chose to consult the 
War Department as to his duty under the cu'cumstances. The 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 251 

administration felt itself safe in accepting and endorsing the 
views of a States Right Jeffersonian Democrat, who was fighting 
for the Union and the Constitution. Gen. Cameron, Secretary 
of War, under date of May 30th, 1861, replied to our Contraband 
General as follows : 

"Your action in respect to the negroes who came within your lines, 
from the service of the rebels, is approved. The Department is sensible 
of the embarrassments which ixiust surround officers conducting military- 
operations in a State by the laws of which slavery is sanctioned. The 
Government cannot recognize the rejection by any State of its Federal 
obligations, nor can it refuse the performance of the Federal obligations 
resting upon itself. Among these Federal obligations, however, none 
can be more important than that of suppi-essing and dispersing armed 
combinations, formed for the purpose of overthrowing its whole consti- 
tutional authority. While, therefore, you will permit no interference 
by persons under your command with the relations of pei^sons held to 
service under the laws of any State, you will, on the other hand, so long 
as any State within which j^our nailitary operations are conducted, is 
under the control of such armed combinations, refrain from surrendering 
to alledged masters, any persons who may come within your lines. You 
will employ such persons in the services to which they may be best 
adapted, keeping an account of the labor by them perfornred, of the 
value of it, and the expenses of their maintenance. TJie question of 
their final disposition to be reserved for future determination." 

This decision of the administration, which touched the slaves 
of rebels voluntarily seeking refuge within the Federal lines, 
was reached with great misgivings at the time as to the effect it 
might have upon public sentiment and the prosecution of the 
war. The aim of Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet was to 
so conduct the Government policy, with reference to the slavery 
question, as to follow rather than lead popular oj)inion in the 
North ; and which was steadily being shaped by abolition agita- 
tion. Aware that in civil convulsions the radical revolutionists 
ever triumph over the moderates, the same, it was believed by 
President Lincoln and his counsellors, would happen in the Re- 
publican party. They could, therefore, afford to permit events 
to dictate the varied changes of policy to effect the cherished 
objects ; yet, nevertheless, aiding by every means in their power, 
to hasten the steps that would pennit their open espousal of the 
changed schedule. 

But Congress, at its extra session in 1861, aided the adminis- 
tration in making a new advance towards its destined goal, in the 
enactment of the first Confiscation Bill, which the President, 



2j3 a review of the 

witli great hesitation, approved. This bill '' limited tlie penalty 
of confiscation to property actually employed in the service of 
the rebellion, with the knowledge and consent of its owners ; 
and instead of emancipating slaves thus employed, left their 
status to be determined either by the Courts of the United States 
or by siibsequent legislation."* This was as bold a move, at so 
early a period in the history of the war, as dared be hazzarded ; 
and was only engineered through the Senate and House of Rep- 
resentatives amidst the greatest misgivings upon the part of 
many Republicans, and after the defeat of the Federal army at 
Bull Run had aroused the country to the necessity of putting 
forth every effort that might weaken the rebellion. It was con- 
tended by the political Abolitionists, that the rebel property, 
including slaves, should all be confiscated, in order to aid in 
breaking the strength of their enemy in arms against the Gov- 
ernment. Whilst really striving to effect in this way the eman- 
cipation of the slaves by confiscation, they strenously maintained 
that the object of the war was simply the maintenance of the 
Union ; and that negro liberation was only one of the means to be 
made use of to put a termination to the conflict. This disguise 
was well made up, and prevented those who could not penetrate 
the veil from showing to the dim-eyed masses the naked skeleton 
of emancipation that stood in the background. 

During the extra session of Congress in 1861, the conservative 
patriot of Kentucky, John J. Crittenden, on the 19th of July, 
1861, asked the unanimous leave of the House of Represetatives 
to submit the following resolution : 

'■'Resolved, By the House of Representatives of the Congress of the 
United States, that the present deplorable civil war has been forced upon 
the country by the disunionists of the Southern States now in revolt 
against the Constitutional Government, and in arms around the Capitol ; 
that in this national emergency Congress, banishing all feeling of mere 
passion and resentment, will recollect only its duty to the whole country ; 
that this war is not waged on our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for 
any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of over- 
throwing or interfereing with the rights or established institutions of the 
States, but to de end and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, 
and to preserve the Union, with all the dignities, equality and rights of 
the seceded States unimpaired, and that as soon as these objects are 
accomplished, the war ought to cease." 

The most thoroughly consistent member of the Rejjublican 



*Letter of Joseph Holt, of Sepembter 12, 1861. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 253 

party in tlje House at that time, (Thaddeus Stevens) objected to 
the reception of the above resohition, and when it passed by 
an almost unanimous vote, he declined to allow his name to 
be recorded, either affirmatively or negatively. The cowards 
and hypocrites of his party in Congress, like Abraham Lincoln 
and William H. Seward, feared to disclose their real designs of 
emancipation, and supported a resolution which expressed senti- 
ments contrary to their feelings, and by which they never meant 
to be obligated. That neg-ro freedom was the darlino; s^oal of 
aspiration of the Republican party, the following from " Occa- 
sional " in the Philadelphia Press of August 31st, 1861, would 
seem to attest : 

"T]iousands who have recoiled from a mere Anti-Slavery war, now 
advocate emancipation as an imjjerative necessity." 

Although Thaddeus Stevens, Owen Lovejoy, Charles Sumner, 
and a few other radicals, had somewhat partially disclosed, the 
designs of the Republican party, it was altogether too soon for 
the Administration to show its hand upon the slavery issue. 
These men though the soul of their party, were represented by 
the crafty Republican leaders as extremists, whose views would 
never be adopted by any organization ; and much less by tlie 
conservative administration of Abraham Lincoln. Such were tlie 
stereotyped reiterations of the Republican press of the ]^orth. 
But time disclosed whose sentiments really represented the heart 
of the party in power ; and to what point the highly Conservative 
Republican administration was drifting. 

On the 10th of August, 1861, the Secretary of the Interior^ 
Caleb Smith, in an address to the citizens of Providence, Rhode 
Island, declared the policy of the Government in the following 
language : 

" The minds of the people of the South have been deceived by the artful 
representations of demagogues, who have assured them that the people of 
the North, were determined to bring the power of this Government to 
bear upon them for the jsurpose of crushing out the institution of slavery, 
I ask you, is there any truth in this charge ? Has the Government of the 
United States, in any single instance, by any one solitary act, interfered 
with the institutions of the South ? No, not one. The theory of this 
Government is, that the States ar^ sovereign within their proper sphere. 
The Government of the United States has no more right to interfere with 
the institution of slavery in South Carolina than it has to interfere with 
the peculiar institutions of Rhode Island,"* 

* Annual Cyclopedia, 1861, p. 643v 



gr4 A REVIEW OF THE 

But it remained for General Fremont to strike tlie key note of 

Republican sentiment, when in liis proclamation of August 30th, 

1861, he said : 

"Real and personal property of those who shall take up arms against 
the United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken an active 
part with their enemies in the field, is declared confiscated to public use, 
and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men." 

From this period the famous explorer, in Abolition estimation, 
became the 'bemi ideal of an American General and Statesman ; 
and the laudations that were showered upon him bj the Republi- 
can press, were almost bewildering. The chord of radical aspira- 
tion had been touched ; and the harmony that followed showed 
the real motives of the revolutionists, much as they had endeav- 
ored to conceal them. But the border States and the conserva- 
tives oi: the Korth were yet an object that could not be dispensed 
with by the war party. Abraham Lincoln and his counsellors 
deemed it too soon to permit the aim of their party to appear before 
the vision of all ; and the avowed emancipationists now had the 
bitter mortification of seeing the conhscation order of their 
favorite general rescinded. The President, under date of Sep- 
tember 11th, issued to John C. Fremont the following order: 

" Yours of the 8tli, in answer to mine of the 2d, is just received. As- 
sured that you, upon the ground, could better judge of the necessities of 
your position than I could at this distance, on seeing your proclamation 
of August 30th, I perceived no general objection to it ; the particular 
clause, however, in relation to the confiscation of property, and the 
liberation of slaves, appeared to me to be objectionable in its non-con- 
formity to the Act of Congress, passed the 6th of last August, u^on the. 
same subjects ; and hence I wrote you expressing my wish that the clause 
should be modified accordingly. Your answer just received, expresses 
the preference on your part,' that I should make an open oi-der for the 
modification, which I very cheerfully do. It is therefore ordered that 
the said clause of the said proclamation be so modified, held and con- 
strued, as to conform with and not to transcend the provisions on the 
same subject contained in the Act of Congress, entitled, ' An Act to con- 
fiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes," approved August 6th, 
1861, and that said Act be published at length with this order." 

Events now sped with a rapid gait, and upon the assembling 
of Congress, in December, 1861, it was discovered that legislative 
timidity was being laid aside, and frank avowals were made by 
Thaddeus Stevens and other bold leaders, showing still more 
clearly the objects of the war. The session was a long and 
active one, and the administration gathered strength and conii- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 253 

dence as one legislator after another expressed himself as regards 
the exigencies of the occasion. By the middle of February, 
1862, the Marat of the revolution, the editor of the New York 
Tj'ibune, was able to make the following announcement : 

" Some of our readers will have noticed with interest, a recent promi- 
nently published despatch of a Washington letter writer, whose correct- 
ness has never been denied, announcing that President Lincoln had, in a 
conversation with Gen. Lane, declared that after much deliberation he 
had come to the conclusion that he could not recognize the existence of 
slavery in the seceded States. Slavery must be deemed to be abolished 
within those States by. the very action of the State seceding ; and of 
course there can be no return of the fugitives from those States nor any 
constitutional recognition of the institution."* 

At length the bold attitude of the radical leaders in Congress, 
the tone of the radical press, and the recollection of the eulo- 
gistic praise which had been heaped upon Fremont by the Aboli- 
itonists, cor.pled with a holy zeal for negro freedom,' induced 
General Hunter, commanding the Department of tlie South, to 
essay emanicipation in order that his name likewise might be 
enrolled, as one of the distinguished commanders of the world, 
along with the great California explorer. For this purpose, he 
issued an order putting the States of Georgia, South Carohna and 
Florida imder martial law, and declaring that as slavery and 
martial law were incompatible, the slaves of those States should 
be forever free. . If the exuberant commendations of the Ilepub- 
lican press were sufhcient to place General Hunter in the cate"-ory 
of famed military heroes, then had he truly reached the heio-ht 
of his ambition, for his eulogists assigned the zealous foe of 
Southern serfdom to a rank with the Cromwells and Napoleons 
of history. With tlie patriot daughters of the North he was the 
valorous knight, sans j)eur et sans reproche, and far eclipsed all 
the Bayards of chivalry. But Abraham Lincoln was Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the American armies, and some glory was 
his due. Were he to permit his pragmatical subordinates one after 
another, to strike off the chains of slavery in their different de- 
partmecits, nothing would remain for himself, the Jupiter tonans. 
of the abolition camp, to perform. He needed no council from 
Generals Fremont and Hunter ; wiser and more cautious intel- 
lects supplied him with advice. No threats by infidel orators of 
New England of enGircling his l)row with a slave hound v:reathy 

*New York Tribune, February 12th,, 1863. 



2o8 A REVIEW OF THE 

would induce liim to yield to the liasty behests of liair-brained 
enthusiasts who were unable to preserve their own secrets, much 
less dictate his governmental policy. When the omens gave 
assurance that a servile and degraded people would fully sustain 
his decree, the grand jubilee of freedom would be proclaimed. 
They did not as yet so admonish him. General Hunter's procla- 
mation of freedom was accordingly set aside, and the officious 
commander rebuked. 

But during all this time, the fruit was maturing, and the fields 
of abolition were rapidly ripening for the harvest. The long 
period of growth was ended. The husbandmen had watched 
and waited with patience, and the reapers would soon be called 
to finish the work. The call of the master was now looked for 
with longing anxiety. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, • 257 



CHAPTER XV. 



EMANCIPATION DECREED. 



Tlie shock of war whicli aroused the nation from its slumber, 

had for a time a depressing effect upon abolition agitation and 

the utterances of the school. An upheaval of union aspiration 

arose in the JSTorthern breast, all else being stifled in the general 

desire that the compact of the fathers should not be broken, and 

the leaders of the revolutionary sect found it necessary to retreat 

for a period from the public gaze, and discuss their sentiments in 

retirement. It was only in the secret chambers where tliese 

leaders dared any longer to give expression to opinions that were 

now perceived upon all hands as those which had plunged the 

nation into the throes of intestine strife and bloodly revolution. 

Gerrit Smith, an honest pioneer in the cause of emancipation, on 

the 30th of October, 18G1, spoke as follows: 

" For months the state of the public mind has not been such as to 
encourage me to speak or write as an Abolitionist."* 

Thaddeus Stevens was one of the Members of Congress who 
were looked upon as tlie extemists of their party, and the mantle 
of power was but cautiously conferred upon him, and only when 
it was perceived that the niglit of contempt which had Aveighed 
upon the Abolitionists was beginning to depart, and their aurora 
of dawn to ascend the political horizon. 

The airitatiu'y crew beo^an ao-ain their movements with the do- 
sign of iniiuencing public thought, and preparing the nation for 
the reception of their views, which were the emancipation of the 
negro slaves in the Southern States, and their social and political 
equality with the whites. After the battle of Bull Run, a plausi- 
ble pretext was afforded them to argue that slavery must be 
destroyed in order to weaken an enemy that had so contrary to 
all expectations shown such dexterity upon the battle-held. As 
the preservation of the Union was the sole object of the masses 

^'New York Tribune, November 9, 1861. 



238 A REVIEW OF THE 

that had espoused the prosecution of the war, the agitators had 
the sagacity to perceive tliat they could now urge with safety a 
policy and measures that were calculated to weaken the Southern 
Confederates. The services of the political club, the abolition 
pulpit and the rostrum of tli?e revolutionary lecturer were again 
brought into requisition to further emancipation, and intensify 
Northern hate against the Southern cause. The following extract 
from the ISTew York Herald of July, 1861, shows the movement 
of the avowed abolition school of the Eastern States : 

" The speeches deUvered at Franiingham, Massachusetts, on the 4th of 
July ; the resolutions of Love joy ; the epistolary manifesto of Gerrit Smith, 
from Peterboro ; and the renewed vigor in behalf of Abolitionism 
of Wendell Phillips, Garrison, Chandler and Greeley, with their satellites, 
all prove that the deadly fear of consequences which frightened the 
revolutionary demagogues of the Northern States into silence, throtj 
months ago, is subsiding, and that they are renew^ing their mischievous 
attempts to undermine the Constitution and perpetuate the dissolution of 
the Union. They have commenced a simultaneous onslaught upon ]\Ir. 
Lincoln, and abuse him openly for not having made' the destruction of 
slave institutions and the confiscation of Southern property a part of his 
programme. Wendell Phillips, at Framingham, gives the President the 
choice of having 'slave-hound^ branded on his forehead, or being the 
liberator of four millions of bondmen." 

The utterances of the radical Jacobins, simply betokened that 
the army of revolutionists were near at hand and ready to second 
their most violent demands. The New York Kepublican Cen- 
tral Club, an influential organization, petitioned Congress soon 
after the battle of Bull Kun, to pass a law abolishing slavery ; 
and letters began to come in inquiring why Government would 
not destroy the root of the evil to save the nation.* By the 
middle of September, the JSTorthern Abolition pulpit was fully- 
freighted for the crusade, and performed its full share of service 
in shaping opinion to subserve the objects of the timid political 
leaders that stood at the helm of Government. The following 
extract of a sermon of Dr. Cheever, preached in the Church of 
the Puritans, will show the boldness of the utterances that were 
bj this time become current. Dr. Cheever said : 

"The desire in England and in Europe, is to see in us a nation, hon- 
ored, great and noble, by abolishing slavery and ijutting away tho 
accursed thing from among us. This is it, which chiils Christian sym- 
pathy and draws upon us instead, the rebukes of the English people. 
* * * There can be no peace — there must be none till this rebellion is 

*New York Trihime, August 2d and 3d, ISOl. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 2u9 

put down, * * * We say to England, give us your sympathy, for 
ours is a holy conflict, we are fighting the battle of ages ; the battle of 
humanity and mankind against the most odious and wicked rebellion the 
world ever saw. But to the South we say, down with your rebellion, we 
do not object to slavery, we have never interfered with it. Why the 
newspapers load their columns with arguments to prove that we never in- 
tended to interfere against slavery, and that we do not mean to interf ei'e. 
They say to the South, you may keep your slaves, and if you return to 
your allegiance we will assist you in keeping them. The declaration that 
you may keep your slavery in the Union ! What an attitude to hold be- 
fore the world ! In God's name, the people demand emancipation, not 
only as an act of beneficence to the slaves, but as their right. Those only 
are traitors who refuse this ; and the only treason that can destroy the 
Government, is the denial of this measure of righteousness. This meas- 
ure can only save the country engaged against the most wicked and 
atrocious Confederacy of hell, We must not loose sight of the fact that 
this is God's war against slavery. He has given to us the means of putting 
an end to slavery, through the rebelhon. * * * if the people are 
faithful and resolute, they will petition and memorialize the President 
until he issues a proclamation to all the bond of the country. The Church 
must do this. If the Church takes a lead in it, the masses will follow. 
There must be an uprising in the Church, in the demand for justice to 
the slaves, as there was an uprising when the booming of the first cannon 
was heard from Sumpter. It is said on aU sides that the force of circum- 
stances must be relied on for bringing about the emancipation of the 
slaves. This is a false, cowardly way of dealing with the great question. "* 

ISTo man, perliaps, in the nation, since the outbreak of hostili- 
ties, had done more to strengthen the courage of the Abolitionists 
throughout the Korth, and add new fuel to the flame of agitation 
that set in after the battle of Bull Kun, than Thaddeus Stevens. 
Although he himself labored under the suspicions of his party 
friends of being too outspoken in his views ; yet he was an hon- 
ored and influential member of a body that represented the voice 
of the Northern people. At the extra session of Congress even, 
called in July, 1861, he maintained the bold and independent 
attitude of one who had little desire to conceal that so far as he 
could influence events, the war should be engineered in the interest 
of emancipation and negro elevation. And when the distin- 
guished John J- Crittenden, of Kentucky, offered his famous 
resolve in Congress, on the 19th of July, 1861, that '■'■tohen the 
Union should he restored hy force of arms, the war ought to 
cease,^'' Mr. Stevens was the only member of his school who was 
unwilling to be enrolled as a hypocrite. In manly utterances he 



*New York Herald, September 16th, 1861. 



2G0 ^ A REVIEW OF THE 

objected to the reception of a resolution wliieh lie could not 
approve ; for with him the war meant something more than the 
simple restoration of the Union. Again^ during the same session 
when the bill was before the House to conhscate property used 
for insurrectionary purposes, he had given utterance to the follow- 
ing sentiments, that by no means were heard with patience by 
his more cautions compeers. Mr, Stevens said : 

" If this war is continued and is bloody, I do not believe that the free 
people of the North will stand by and see their sons, brothers and neigh- 
bors slaughtered by thousands and tens of thousands by rebels with arms 
in their hands, and forbear to call upon their enemies to be our friends, 
and help us in subduing them. I for one, if it continues and has the 
consequences mentioned, shall be ready to go for it, let it horrify the 
genllenian from New York or anj'body else. That is niy doctrine; and 
that wall be the doctrine of the whole free people of the North before 
two years roll around, if this war continues. 

"As to the end of the war, luitil the rebels are subdued no man in the 
North thinks of it. If the Government are equal to the jjeoi^le — and I 
believe they are — there will be no bargaining ; there will be no negotia- 
tion ; thei-e will be no truces with rebels, except to bury the dead, until 
every man shall have laid down his arms, disbanded his organization, 
submitted himself to the Government and sued for mercy. And, sir, if 
those who have the control of the Government are not lit for the task 
and have not the nerve and mind for it, the peojjle will take' care that 
there are others who are — although, sir, I have not a bit of fear of the 
present administration or of the present Executive." 

"I have spoken more freely, perhaps, than gentlemen within my 
hearing might think politic ; but I have just spoken what I felt. I have 
spoken what I believe will be the result ; and I warn Southern gentlemen 
that if this war is to continue, there will be a time when my fi-iend from. 
New York will see it declared by this nation, that every bondman in the 
South — belonging to a rebel recollect ; I confine it to them — shall be 
called upon to aid us in war against their masters and restore this Union." 

It was to be expected that speeches such as the above from 
men of the conceded capacity of Mr. Stevens, would embolden 
Abolitionists everywhere to utter their opinions with more free- 
dom than they. had as yet been able to do since the outbreak of 
the war. A writer in the New York Tribune in November, 
1861, spoke as follows of the growing sentiment of the people, 
which in other words was simply abolitionism gradually with- 
drawing the mask which it h.ad hitherto carefully worn. This 
wi'iter says : 

" We do not think we over-estimate the rapid march of public sent), 
ment in this direction. Cautious and consei-vative men are going forward 
faster than they imagnine. All now conceive, " if Slavery or the Unio7i 



POLIIICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 201 

must fall, then let Slavery instantly ioerislu And the mi;nber of those 
v/ho believe that this alternative is close upon us is multitudinous, and 
increases with every reverse of our arms, and with every day that post- 
pones a decisive victory of our forces. 

" When the Confiscation of August last was passed, discharging from 
labor or service every slave who had been used by the rebels, directly or 
indirectly for carrying on the war, the President even hesitated to sign 
it. Weeks rolled on, our arms encountered reverses, the rebellion assumed 
gigantic proportions. At length Fremont's proclamation appeared. 
After a little breathing spell, and when the President resolved to modify 
it so as to make it conform exactly to the Act of Congress, these timid 
and conservative classes, who had stigmatised this law as an abolition 
scheme, rushed to the defense of the President, and eulogized the Act of 
Congress as a wise measure. 

"And we recollect how cautiously the people received and how gin- 
gerly the administration handled the contraband proposition Avhich Gen. 
eral Butler let fly at the public from Fortress Monroe. The War Depart- 
ment, after much painful cogitation, and despite not a few misgivings in 
conservative circles, restricted the application of this novel doctrine 
exclusively to the slaves of rebels who voluntarily sought shelter within 
the walls of the fort, and were then to be set at work only in pacific 
employments. But we now find the department applauded in all quar- 
ters, while instructing commanders invading the South, not only to 
receive and arm them m companies to aid in crushing the rebellion — in a 
word, to convert them into military auxiliaries. This rule is to be ap- 
plied not to the slaves of rebels only, but to those of loyal citizens, giving 
assurance to the latter that Congress will pay them for their losses."* 

By the time the Thirty-seventh Congress assembled in Decem- 
ber, 1861, the current of agitation had become quite rapid, and 
every da}^ added to its velocity. Vast armies had been called 
from both sections of the country to meet each other in mortal 
combat, and many a field had been drenched with American blood 
without any decided advantage having been secured up to this 
period by either of the contestants. The flag of the North was, 
however, rather in the ascendant. Severe blows had been dealt 
to the Southern Confederacy in Missouri, Kentucky, and West 
Virginia ; and the stars and stripes were floating over Ilatteras 
and Port Royal on the Eastern coast. 

The conflicting sentiments that had, from the fonuation of our 
Constitution, formed the basis of the two political parties of the 
nation, with the meeting of Congress, in December, 1861, were 
again brought forward in marked contrast. The unanimity of 
approval that the prosecution of the war for the Union seemed 



'•■New York Tribune, November 13th, 1861. 



2(>3 A REVIEW OF THE 

to have secured, after the assault upon Sumj)ter, began now to 
disappear; and the leaders assumed in somewhat disguised bear- 
ings, before the country, the respective positions that marked 
their several views. The radicals of each of the divergent par- 
ties were the tirst to disj)lay their positions. Clement L. Vallan- 
dignam and George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, and ex Governor 
"Wickliffe, of Kentucky, were conspicuous amongst those who 
undisguisedly maintained the old attitude of the Democratic party, 
that the war against the South was an encroachment upon 
the Federal Constitution, and an invasion of State rights and of 
the immunities of the Southern people. It was an unpopular 
position for a statesman to defend in the midst of the excitement 
of war; for the people, the large proportion of whom ai"e in- 
capable of reasoning and deducing logical conclusions, were 
already carried away by their zeal in behalf of the Union, as 
they conceived ; and whicb they now regarded as in great 
jeopardy and danger of dissolution. It was indeed with the 
greatest difficulty that these men and the few who heartily co- 
operated with them, were able to unite all the Democratic Rep- 
resentatives of Congress in a phalanx of solid resistance to the 
unconstitutional measures of the dominant party. Their resist- 
ance, however, was but ciceronic and vain in its results. They 
simply could enter their protests against the behests of power 
sustained by the bristling bayonets of a hireling soldierj'- ; and in 
doing so they periled their rej)utations and future political j)ros- 
pects before their several constituencies, to such an extent that 
most of them, by degrees, sunk beneath the waves of a boisterous 
political ocean. They, however, are the politics J patriots and 
martyrs whom truthful history will enroll on the same pages with 
Cicero, Brutus and Cassius ; and with the patriots who sunk with 
Homan liberty on the field of Phillippi. 

Civil war was no period for calm reflection, and for the suc- 
cessful display of considerative statesmanship, such as is needed 
to guide the affairs of States and ^Nations. But, upon the other 
hand, it was the epoch for bringing to the surface of the political 
caldron, the revolutionary and fanatical leaders whose mission 
in life would seem to be most appropriately characterized by styl- 
ing it the destructive. Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and 
Owen Lovejoy arose to the ascendant, as leaders of their party, 
and displayed a disregard of inherited rights and of the man- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 263 

dates of tlie Federal Constitution, that find no parallel in Ameri- 
can history ; and to be equalled, must be found, if at all, on the 
dark and bloody pages of the French Kevolution. These men 
came to Washington, all of them, for one reason or another, 
freighted with cargoes of gall and bitterness to pour upon the 
heads of the Southern people driven to rebellion ; and now the 
opportunity was fully come for such a display of partisan tactics, 
as would enable them to triumph over their ancient foes, and 
ultimate the struggle in universal emancipation. Thaddeus 
Stevens, the dreaded extremist of his party, was at length har- 
nassed by his coadjutors in the glittering armor of strength, 
being now the honored Chairman of the Committee of Ways 
and Means of the Lower House of Congress. Representing a 
constituency, in which his party could hgure live thousand ma- 
jority, he was the representative of all others who dared to be 
frank in his public expressions, and bold in his recommendations 
of measures to accomplish the objects of the revolutionary school.* 
And, instead of being, tlierefore, any longer the shunned North- 
ern radical, he now towered in his strength as Achilles oa the 
plain, and his blows were dealt with unerring aim upon slavery, 
his Hectorean antagonist. At the beginning of Congress, he 
was one of the first members of the House to open his batteries 
upon his foe, and indicate the aim of the war jiarty. On the 
first day of the session, he submitted the following preamble and 
resolutions : 

" WHEREA.S, Slavery has caused the present rebellion in the United 
States ; and whereas, there can be no solid and permanent peace and 
union in this Republic so long as that institution exists within it ; and 
whereas, slaves are now used by the rebels as an essential means of sup- 
porting and protracting the Avar ; and whereas, by the law of nations it 
is right to liberate the slaves of any enemy to weaken its power ; there- 
fore, 

1st. " Be it resolved, By the Senate and House of I?epresentatives of the 
United States of America, in Congress assembled, that the President be 

*"Some of our public men do not hesitate to say, that rather than 
bring back the seceded Slave States into the Union, they would agree to 
a peaceful and prompt separation. They contend that in the event of a 
reunion, the slave despotism would rule by its unity and with the aid of 
the Breckinridge Democrats of the Free States ; and by means of the 
divisions of the Republicans, the destinies of the future of our country 
will be completely controlled by traitors to the Federal Constitution. 
Although no open demonstration in favor of this theory has yet been 
made, it is undoubtedlv^ sincerely entertained in certain influential 
quarters," — " Occasional," in Philadelphia Press, January 21, 1862. 



264 A REVIEW OF THE 

requested to declare free, and to direct all our generrJs and officers in 
command, to order freedom to all slaves who shall leave their masters, 
or who shall aid in quelling this rebellion. 

2d. " Be it further resolved, That the United States pledge the faith of 
the Union to make full and fair compensation to all loyal citizens who 
are, or shall remain active in supporting the Union, for the loss they 
shall sustain by virtue of this Act," * 

In the above resolutions, the animios of the Republican party 
was clearly betokened ; yet the more cautions manipulators of 
partisan tactics contended that they expressed simply the views 
of the extreme Abolitionists ; and that they would never be 
made the basis of the party creed.f Indeed so closely veiled 
had Abraham Lincoln and his esoteric advisers been able to keep 
their opinions, that the rash men of the Abolition wing of his 
party, came to suspect the head of the Government as lacking in 
zeal for the cause of emancipation. His zeal, however, was 
equally ardent with their own, as time at length disclosed. But 
he was surrounded with an array of counsellors who were sagac- 
ious enough as to perceive that the only way by which slavery 
could be destroyed, was to permit the administration to appear as 
if led by public opinion, to lay the axe to the root of the insti- 
tution they were all seeking to extirpate. In one of the earliest 
caucuses held by the extreme Abolition members of Congress, 
after the assembling of that body in December, 1861, and con- 
vened for the purpose of considering the emancipation measures 
already submitted ; Mr. Stevens, who was recognized as the lead- 
ing radical spirit of the House, if not of his p-arty at Washing- 
ton, made an attack upon the President for refusing to acquiesce 
at once in the expediency of the emancipation programme. In 
that speech he is reported to have said : 

" That the Republican partj-- have been sold in the election of Lincoln 
to the Presidency ; that the North West had deceived them by assm-- 



*Congressional Globe, part 1 of Second Session of 37th Congress, p. 6. 

•j-The manner in which the Republican papers deceived the country, is 
seen in the following, from "Occasional," of the Philadelphia Press, of 
June 16th, 1862 : " In the campaign that is about to be opened against 
the administration and the war, powerful emphasis is to be laid upon the 
empty accusation that the friends of Mr. Lincoln favor unconditional 
emancipation and negro equality. Contemptible as this accusation is, it 
is frequently repeated by men who, in their heated partisanship, forget 
that tliey are intelligent and reasonable beings. * * * The 
men in the Free States who advocate unconditional emancipation, are 
very few in numbers ; and in the RepubUcan party they do not number 
one in five hundred." 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 2G5 

ances that he was a true and sound Kepublican ; but that assurance had 
failed."* 

Wendell Phillips and other ardent Liberators, had before this 
made repeated assaults upon the President, and accused him of a 
desire to perpetuate the institution of Southern Slavery. Mr. 
Phillips had even been so bold as to assert that the President 
had it in his own choice, either to wear a wreath of contempt or 
be enrolled in history as the destroyer of Southern serfdom. 

The resolutions, tactics, and tone of the radicals of the Kepub- 
lican party in this Congress, disclosed that it had been fully 
determined that slavery should either perish in the national 
struggle then waging, or a restoration of the old Union be ren- 
dered impossible. Indeed, Mr. Stevens from this period made 
little concealment that this, so far as he could influence public 
affairs, was his fixed and determined resolve. He and his zealous 
coadjutors should have been less severe upon Abraham Lincoln 
and the administration ; for this official was not in a situation to 
give as free utterance to his opinions as others ; and besides, he 
had dextrously disclosed in his message to Congress of December 
3d, 1861, that he was in spirit, in full accord with the most 
outspoken radical of his party. In that message he disclosed, to 
an observant mind, his willingness to accept the most extreme 
results of the emancipating crusade, that is to say the social 
equality of the black race. He said : 

"If any good reason exists why we should persevere longer, in with- 
holding our recognition of the independence and sovereignty of Hayti 
and Liberia, I am unable to discover it. Unwilling, however, to inaugu- 
rate a novel policy in regard to them, without the approbation of Con- 
gress, I submit for your consideration the expediency of an appropriation 
for maintaining a charge 'd affairs near each of those new States." 

The recognition of these States, and the appointment of gen- 
tlemen to mi the new posts of honor, was a clear and unmistakable 
recognition of the social equality of the negro with the white race. 

One of the earliest measures submitted by the radical leaders 
of the Republican party, in this Congress, was the bill to punish 
officers and privates of the armies for arresting, detaining or 
delivering fugitive slaves to their masters. But this, at first, was 
feared by many of the party, as too plain a disclosure of their 
views ; and one that might not meet with public approbation. 
The Fugitive Slave law stood yet unrepealed upon the statute 

*New York Herald, December 10th, 1861. 



266 A REVIEW OF THE 

books of the nation ; and the bill now proposed, too clear]}-, had 
the appearance of conflicting with that law. Being stubbornly 
resisted by the Democrats, and also by some Conservative lie- 
publicans, it was defeated in its original shape ; but it was after- 
wards in February, 1802, reported from the Military Committee 
as an additional article of war in the following words : 

"All officers are prohibiteJ from eniploylng an}' of the forces under 
their respective commands, for the purpose of returning fugitives frona 
service or labor, who may have escaped from any pei'sons to whom such 
service or labor is claimed to be due. Any officer who shall be found 
guilty by court-martial of violating this Article, shall be dismissed froin 
th^ service." 

This bill, after having been resisted in its new shape by the 
Constitutional defenders in both Houses, was passed and received 
the sanction of the President on March 13th, 1862. Indeed, it 
seemed clearly apparent, almost from the beginning of this ses- 
sion of Congress, that one spirit, without any digested plan, 
animated the leading Abolitionists in these bodies, inasmuch as 
innumerable propositions one after another were submitted in the 
two Houses, all having one general aim, negro emancipation. 

But the bill which, of all others, was intended as the real 
entering wedge for all subsequent emancipatory measures, was 
that prepared as early as December 17th, 1801, reported by 
Morrill, of Maine, on February 13th, 1802, and which was to 
free the slaves of the District of Columbia. The bill served its 
purpose of testing the sentiment of the country as regards this 
radical advance, and assured the extreme Republicans how far 
the moderate men of their party M'ould follow them. They 
were determined to overleap all constitutional barriers in their 
way, and if a sufficient following in their ranks would j^ermit 
the passage of this radical measure, the future seemed clear for 
them. Tlii* bold attempt to subvert the plain spirit of the Con- 
stitution, the Democrats and Border State Representatives battled 
with the most stubborn resistance ; but their efforts, as on former 
like occasions, were futile ; and they were obliged to witness 
another invasion of the constitutional imnnmities of their country- 
men. The arbitrary assessment of $300 as the value of the slave 
of each loyal master in the District, was a most palpable infrac- 
tion of the Constitution, which declared that no man shall " be 
deprived of life, liberty and property without due process of 
law." The rapid change of base by the Republican party, which 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 2G7 

the support of tliis measure indicated, did not escape tlie animad- 
version and severe reproof of Senator Davis, of Kentucky, who 
stood by the landmarks of the Constitution, and fought as an 
ancient Eoman in behalf of his country's liberty. He said : 

" There is a very different spirit and there are very different purposes, 
now in the dominant party in relation to slaverj-, to what were declared 
a few months ago." 

This bill was passed in both Houses by an almost strict j)arty vote, 
and received the approval of the President April 16th, 1862. 
The abohtion re-echoes of approval to the passage of this law, 
giving freedom to the few slaves in the District were heard 
throughout the whole jS^orth, as therein the fiery advocates of 
negro liberation recognized an assuring harbinger of their long 
anticipated millennium. 

In the midst of the blows that were falling thick and fast 
upon the institution of slavery, it would have indicated great 
lack of ardor had not Abraham Lincoln, the Agamemnon of 
the Abolition host, shown some apparent readiness, at least, to 
do his full share in the great battle of emancipation. He must 
somewhat keep pace with his ardent chieftains, or all the honor 
of the factory might be borne away by others ; and he left to 
pine in grief because of inactivity. Accordingly, on the 6th of 
March, 1862, he submitted in a special message the proposition 
that Congress should pledge the Government as ready to co- 
operate pecuniarily with any State, that might be willing to 
inaugurate measures for the emancipation of the slaves within 
its borders. His proposition, as he was well aware, could not 
fail to attract some agreeable perfume in the shape of abolition 
adulation to his olfactory sensibilities ; and might in a measure 
compensate for some of a contrary character, to which he had 
been repeatedly subjected. It is true his proposition was not 
composed of the ingredients coveted by the Stevens wing of his 
party ; for this leader of the House characterized it as " the most 
diluted milk and water-gruel proposition that was ever given to 
the American nation." 

Mr. Stevens, however, who by this time had come more fully 
to reahze the qualities of Darwinian development possessed by 
the head of the Government, moved and carried in the House, a 
reference of this message to a Committee of the Whole on the 
state of the Union. All the unconstitutional objections that 



268 A REVIEW OF THE 

were urged against tlie passage of this measure ; and every lack 
of warrant shown to draw money from the National Treasury 
for the purpose of freeing slaves, were insufficient to swerve from 
their purposes the reckless leaders of the Republican party. 
Emancipation was the first goal they were bent upon reaching ; 
and all obstacles that stood in the way of their passage must be 
removed at any cost. The object must be reached or the Union 
of the States must pay the forfeit. President Lincoln, before 
submitting this proposition of compensated emancipation, was 
well aware that no Southern State either desired, or could be in- 
duced under the existing circumstances voluntarily to emancipate 
its slaves. Honor and integrity, therefore, should have demanded 
of the President to declare what he really meant ; that if the 
Southern States declined to accede to the aholitiori demand, he 
would shortly relieve them of that necessity. But the subject 
afforded the President an excellent opportunity to exhibit him- 
self as disposed to be fair and generous to the loyal slave holders 
of the South ; whereas, neither he nor his party ever meant that 
the proposition should be accepted. The measure, however, 
passed botli Houses, and received the assent of its pro]30ser, 
President Lincoln. 

The abolition current was by this time become a rapid tide, 
and was washing away one constitutional embankment after 
another. Every day developed more clearly that the assurances 
which liad been made by the Republican leaders and press, that 
they did not intend to interfere with slavery, were all deceptious 
and intended to blindfold the nation, until ifbecame involved in 
fratricidal strife with the people of the Southern States. One 
Member of Congress after another was disclosing his secret views 
that the destruction of slavery with the zealous leaders had from 
the first been a deliberate and well matured resolve. Members 
no longer hesitated to declare upon the floor of Congress, that 
they would not vote a man or a dollar for the further prosecution 
of the war, unless it be made one for the emancipation of slavery, 
(ilearly expressed. 

Even the attitude that the party had assumed in the 36th 
Congress; in the' organization of the new Territories of Colorado, 
Nevada and Dacotah, was hypocritical and false. These Territo- 
ries had been organized after the withdrawal of the Representa- 
tives from the Cotton States ; and by Acts wliich maintained a 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 209 

profound silence as regarded slavery. These Acts were passed at 
a time when Abolitionism was rather at a discount, in view of 
the calamities it was bringing upon the nation. But as soon as 
its former strentgh was regained, and it became apparent that the 
nation, was intoxicated with the fumes of blood and fratricidal 
strife, this territorial legislation must undergo a like metamor- 
phose. For this purpose, Owen Lovejoy reported a bill at this 
session of Congress for the abolition or prohibition of slavery in 
all the Territories of the United States. This Bill after having 
passed the ordinary ordeal of resistance, as the other measures 
already alluded to, became a law in the Abolition sense, though 
stigmatized as unconstitutional. 

Affairs were now nearing a crisis. Congress had shown itself 
ready to endorse the most extreme measures of the radicals of 
the Republican party. All the extreme measures seemed to em- 
enate from the representatives of the people ; and the President 
had hitherto been fortunate in being able to appear before the 
country as a Union man, with or without slavery. He and his 
advisers were sufficiently shrewd to have him preserve an equi- 
poise amidst the extremes. While therefore, the President stood 
before the friends of the Union, as a Union man. Senator Sumner 
who could communicate with the inner recesses of his soul, was 
early in 18G2, able to assure his Abolition friends in the East, 
that they need not be solicitous as to the views of the Commander 
in Chief. That personage was all right, as time would fully 
disclose. Time did precisely what the Senator had promised. 
The country was fully committed to the task of subjugating the 
Southern States. A people cannot reason amidst the strife of 
warfare. All this the President or his advisers knew ; and the 
long anticipated opportunity seemed near at hand when the curtain 
could with safety be i-aised. 

In an interview with the Representatives from the Border 
States, the President urged them to accept compensated emanci- 
pation for their several States ; but these men, educated in schools 
in which a reverence for right and obedience to the Constitution 
had been taught, spurned an offer that they felt no other save a 
usurper of his country's liberty was able to tender. A fitting 
parallel to this proposition of the American President is found 
in the instance of that individual who escorted the Son of Man 
to the pinacle of the Temple, and temptingly proposed, " all these 



270 A REVIEW OF THE 

will I give thee?'' Neither in the one case nor the other, was it 
in the power of the proposer to execute his promise ; but in the 
modern instance it was designed to enable the deceiver the better 
to develope his contemplated programme. 

Northern arms on the battle-field were still slowly penetrating 
the rebellion, and General Lee, the commander of the Southern 
invading army, had left the field of Antietam with no advantage. 
The President was buoyant with a victor's joy, and four days 
after this sanguinary contest, on the 22d of September, 1862, he 
issued his famous emancipation decree, to take effect with the 
beginning of the coming year. The edict of the master was at 
length issued ; the goal of emancipation had been reached ; and 
like death upon the pale horse of apocalyptic vision, the abolition 
fiend went forth conquering and to conquer. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. ^^ 



CHAPTER XVI, 



EXECUTIVE UNCONSTITUTIONALISM. 



The declaration of war by President Lincoln against the people 
of the seceded States, was in conflict with the letter and spirit of 
the Federal Constitution ; which was but the receptacle of such 
clearly specified powers, as the framers of that instrument, the 
States, through their Representatives, had deemed it expedient 
to delegate. But the party to which he owed his election as the 
Chief Magistrate of the nation was the legitimate successor of 
Federalism and its descendants ; that party which during all the 
anterior history of the Goveram'ent had struggled for a liberal 
interpretation of the Constitution, as it was termed, in opposition 
to the strict construction of the Democracy. Indeed, this principle 
of constitutional construction with the new party was a necessity, 
as otherwise the institution of slavery, whether in the States or 
Territories, was invulnerable. It came into power, therefore, 
bearing upon its front the clear and unmistakable evidence of 
Hamiltonian parentage ; and the period now seemed to have 
arrived that promised verification to the anticipations of the an- 
cient monarchist. 

The leading patriots of the nation, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, 
Benton and Buchanan, had from the inception of the Anti- 
Slavery agitation, clearly perceived the tendency of the new 
school of theorists, should they ever succeed in grasping the 
reins of government. And now, when this at length had taken 
place in the election of Abraham Lincoln, the declarations of 
these philosophic statesmen were verified. The Constitution, as 
they had predicted, was trampled upon, and the laws of the 
Government set at defiance. This was worse than monarchy 
itself — it was the inauguration of the despotism that followed. 
The monarchical Alexander Hamilton, and these later American 
patriots, were equally logical and sagacious. Both perceived 
that the future of America was freighted with dangers to the 



273 A REVIEW OF THE 

perpetuity of free Constitutional Government ; equally was it 
manifest to tlieir logical visions that under republican institutions 
wild, turbulent and selfish leaders would be able to seduce the 
people, and ascend the seats of power ; and fully conscious of these 
dangers, the one foresaw the eventual overthrow of the Republic, 
and the others, hoping against hope, still fondly clung to their 
darling favorite and stroVvi in vain to battle the rising fanaticism 
that endano;ered it. 

But the unconstitutional declaration of war against the seceded 
States, was simply the commencement of the despotic power of 
the party calling itself Republican. The great inheritance of 
English liberty, the culmination of individual rights, the famous 
privilege of Ilalects Gorjpxis that had been wrested by the staunch 
freemen of the mother country from the Sovereigns of Great 
Britain, was next to fall before the usurping despot, who had 
been chosen by a revolutionary party to trample upon the inherited 
rights of his countrymen, and give freedom to a race of men, 
whom history had shown to be incapable of building up or sus- 
taining civilization But usurj)ers usually proceed with cautious 
V steps, and it was so in this case. In the name of libery and 
clothed with the sanctimonious garb of Immanitarianism, the 
ancient inheritance is invaded. The American President, with- 
out any legislative sanction,* directs the suspension of the 



""The su~p3nsion of the Habeas Corpus by President Lincoln, was a bold 
undertaking for an American Executive to assume, and one that should 
have caused his arrest as an usurper of his country's liberties. Up to 
the outbreak of the war, all the expository writers on the Constitution, 
without exception ; all the most eminent jurists of the country ; and all 
the Members of the only Congress in which the question was fully dis- 
cussed (during the Burr conspiracy), had agreed that this extraordinary 
power, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, was lodged in Congress 
alone. It was regarded as a legislative power, but one which no former 
Congress deemed it expedient to exercise. The exertion of this power, 
by President Lincoln, from the first met with the steady and almost 
unanimous opposition of the best legal minds of the nation of both politi- 
cal parties ; and it was only a few second-rate lawyers (anxious to sup- 
port revolutionary principles) wliose legal endorsement in this particular 
the Pr. sident ever received. Attorney-General Bates, and the octogena- 
rian, Horace Binney, of Philadelphiiv, were conspicuous amongdt the 
President's defenders. 

In the celebrated Merryman case, Rodger B. Taney, Chief-Justice of 
the Suprenae Court, clearly enunciated the doctrine that the suspension 
of the Habeas Corpus by President Lincoln was unconstitutional and 
void. This same view was expressed by Chief-Justice Dixon, as the 
unanimous opinion of the highest Court of the State of Wisconsin. 
Judge Dixon says : " And first, I think the President has no power in 
the sense of the Ninth Article of the Constitution of the United States 
to suspend the privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus. Upon this ques- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 2:3 

Habeas Corpus in a speciiied district, bj virtue of whicli a citizen 
of Maryland was seized and incarcerated, who was guilty of no 
defined legal offence — and an inhabitant of this State was made 
the object of daspotic power, because of the strong sympathy of 
its people with those who had raised the banner of revolt to 
abolition domination ; and because, in phrenzied Northern opin- 
ion, the people of these States should be held in the strictest reins. 
The President and the powers behind the throne, felt assured 
that the abrogation of the privilege of the time-honored writ of 
Habeas Corpus in behalf of a citizen of Maryland, would be less 
resented in the condition of public opinion that then obtained, 
than were the like attempted in New York or Pennsylvania. 
This first essay of such power was wholly experimental, but the 
result justified further advances. Sustained by his obsequious 
Attorney-General and a maddened public sentiment, President 
Lincoln was able to set at defiance the mandate of the learned 
and venerated Roiger B. Taney, the Chief-Justice of the highest 
court of the nation ; and it was then apparent that no bounds 



tion, it seems to me that the reasoning of Chief-Justice Taney, in ex- 
■parte Merryman, is un uisvverable." — Annual CyclopcecUa, 181)2, p. 515. 

Judge Hall, in the Northei-n D. strict of New York, in a case tiiat came 
before him, expressed tlie same opinions and fortified tlie same by a vast 
array of legal learning. Judge Curtis, of Boston, one of tlie dissenting 
members of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, published a strong 
argument combatting the position of President Lincoln in assuming the 
right to suspend the wi-it. Even the ablest Republican lawyers oi Con- 
gress were unwilling to advocate a view of constitutional law which was 
repugnant to their legal understandings, and to all just theories of inter- 
pretation. Senator Sherman, of Ohi -, in his speech of December 9th, 
1865i, said: "Our attention was called to this question at the exti-a 
session by the opinion of the Attorney-General, that the President had 
the power and by the actual exercise of it by his proclamation, of suspend- 
ing the writ in certain cases. I formed and expressed the opinion, at an 
early period of the session, that this power was purely a legislative 
power, to be exercised by Congress with tlie approval of the President. 
This opinion has been strengthened by subsequent reflection, bv the able 
criticisms of lawyers and statesmen, which the discussion has elicited 
and by the decisions of some of the Courts. It is apparent from the 
context in which this power is found, that the framers of the Constitution 
classed it with the delegated powers of Congress. In its nature it is a 
legislative power." 

Senator Trumbull, in a speech of December 9, 1863, said : "The better 
opmion, as has been stated here to-day among judges, lawyers and con- 
stitutional commentators, surely is that the writ of Habeas Corpus was 
never intended by the Constitution to be suspended, except in pursuance 
of an Act of Congress." 

John Merryman was the party aiTested, and in behalf of whom Rodger 
B. Taney issued a writ of Habeas Corpus, but which, in pursuance of 
instructions from President Lincoln, was not obeyed. A full report of 
this case is found in the 9th Volume of American Law Register, p. 534. 



274 A REVIEW OF THE 

could be placed to liis usurpations. The renowned Massacliusetts 
Senator's prediction was thus early fulfilled, that if ever the 
fanatical Abolition party came into power, the Constitution would 
perish, the Supreme Court be overthrown, and its decree3 
repudiated. 

Another unconstitutional stretch of executive authority, was 
the Presidential Proclamation of the blockade * of April 19th, 
1861, along the whole seceded coast, and which afterwards, upon 
the secession of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, 
was enlarofed so as to embrace the sea-coast of these latter States 
that had united their fortunes with the new Confederacy. In 
support of these infractions of the Federal compact, the tyrant's 
plea of necessity was omnipotent to refute every argument that 
could be urged against the President's illegal assumption of power. 
An observer, even at this early period, might have reflected in 
the following strain. The weakness of free government is strik- 
ingly exemplified in this convulsion, and this should seem patent 
to every reflecting mind. Here is a ruler elected in accordance 
with the letter, but in violation of the spirit of the Constitution 
of the country, and who has sworn to defend it, striking down 
that same Constitution, in order that he and his party may be 
able to grasp objects, which are unattaiuble as long as the old 
Magna Charta subsists. The friends of the Constitution are in 
banishment, in apparent array against the Government, though in 
truth fighting its battles, and Cataline holds the gates of the 
city. The people are in confusion ; have mistaken their enemies 
for their friends ; are crusading under the banners of duplicity, 
and fast digging the graves of constitutional republicanism and 
free government. But the elected ruler is guilty of no higher 
offence than all the other leaders, who have sworn allegiance to 
the governmental compact ; but who like him were too cowardly 
to openly assail it, yet Avho gained control of affairs by falsehood 



* Thaddeus Stevens was too able a lawyer to be willing to acknowledge 
that the General Government could blockade its own ports. In his 
Bpeech of December 9th, 1862, in the House of Representatives, he said : 
"We ourselves, by what I consider a most uiilortunate act, not well 
considered — declared a lalockade of their (the Confederate States) ports — 
have acknowledged them as a power. We can not blockade our own 
ports. It is an absurdity. We blockade an enemy's ports. The very 
fact of declaring this blockade, recognized them as a belligerent power 
entitled to all the privileges and subject to all the rules of war, accord* 
ing to the law of nations." 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN A]\IEPJCA. 375 

and fraud ; and then, as matricides, stab the kind parent who 
nourished them and shielded their ascent to power. A people 
that can be seduced by such leaders, and induced to light fo." 
principles thej utterly abhor, neither deserve nor or they compe- 
tent to preserve the inheritances of freedom. They evince this 
inability in disclosing the simplicity and weakness here presented, 
and time is but required to fasten the rivets of Imperialism upon 
their social structure. 

But madness and fury had carried reason away, and the masses 
seemed bent upon their own downfal and destruction. The sac- 
rihce of peace, liberty and prosperity were insignificant, provided 
only the subjugation of the Southern Confederates could be 
effected. This object in the general fanatical opinion, was worth 
all it might cost, though the Union and Free government itself 
should perish in the achievement. Even the breaches made by 
Lincoln and his administration in the walls of the Federal Con- 
stitution, were greeted with shouts of applause by an infatuated 
populace; and with still greater huzzas, should some honest 
defender of that ancient heritage, utter his feeble protest against 
the Presidential usurpation. The impotent friend of his- country's 
liberty was execrated as a traitor; whilst the cool, caleulatino- 
tyrant who had fraudulently seized the helm of State, was ap- 
plauded as Honest Abe. 

At the extra session of Congress, which assembled on the 4th 
day of July, 1861, little else was transacted save that men and 
money were freely voted to the Administration for the prosecu- 
tion of the war against the South ; and the infractions of the 
Federal C onstitution were also condoned. A larger appropriation 
of money, and a greater number of soldiers even, were granted 
by Congress for the war, than Lincoln had asked for in his 
message ; and a resolution was introduced in the Senate by Wil- 
son, of Massachsetts, and pressed for a considerable time Avith 
the greatest zeal to legitimate the confessedly illegal acts of the 
President. But this body, although overwhelmingly Republican, 
was unwilling as yet to place itself upon record as openly en- 
dorsing the plainest violations of the Constitution, and such as 
no partisan justification would serve to exculpate. Public senti- 
ment was not yet clear upon this point. The manner, however, 
in which the leaders of the Republican party in both Houses of 
Congress, chose in their conduct to excuse the unconstitutional 



276 A REVIEW OF THE 

acts of the President, demonstrated that instead of censure being 
intended for him, his whole course, since his elevation to power, 
met with their warmest approval. No necessity, therefore, dic- 
tated to him to be at all guarded in his further advances on the 
highway of despotism, and he, himself, was sufSciently shrewd 
as to perceive that a general Congressional permit was now 
granted to him to strike down without reserve the remaining lib- 
erties of his countrymen. 

President Lincoln, as the Chief Executive of the Northern 
and of such Southern States as the Government had been able 
to retain in its military grasp, with the adjournment of this 
Congress, began through his Secretaries to order with less hesi- 
tation the arrest and imprisonment of prominent Democratic 
citizens; and those who disbelieved in the war against the 
seceded States. The hated bastile, that relic of barbarism, which 
had sunk amidst the upheaval of the French revolution, arose on 
the Western continent, and became the receptacle of those 
Americans who feared not a despot's oppression, because they 
' loved the institutions of the country under which they had been 
reared and educated. Arbritrary arrests of prominent individu- 
als in all sections of the country, subject to the Lincoln adminis- 
tration, were matters of common occurrence in nearly every 
community ; and the little bell of Secretary Seward became an 
instrument of daily requisition in the overthrow of the people's 
inalienable rights. Instead of Americans being free, by virtue 
of a written Constitution, which guaranteed to all life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness ; the further enjoyment of these 
rights depended upon the individual will of a ruler and his 
satellites. Men who had ranked as eminent and worthy states- 
men, were without warrant seized in the seclusion and sanctity 
of their homes, and dragged thousands of miles and immured in 
loathsome cells — yea, at times in dungeons, because, perhaps, 
they had given expression to some sentiment unpalatable to a 
member of the party in power. Judges, who for years had 
adorned the chairs of justice, were dragged from their seats by 
a ruthless and vulgar squad of soldiers, and often brutally 
^ wounded in the struggle that occasionally ensued on such occa- 
sions. Should the party to be arrested demand the authority for 
the arrest, and the accusation with which he was charged, he 
would in all probabihty be told that he was a Demooraty and that 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 277 

all sucli were traitors and deserv^ed not only to be arrested but 

also to be hung. One of the incarcerated in Fort Lafayette^ 

afterwards describing his condition of imprisonment, says : 

' Here you would see men from almost all the States, the largest por- 
tion of whom were in the vigor of manhood. You would find men who 
had ably represented our Government at foreign courts, had adorned the 
United States Senate, been Governors of States, Judges of courts. Mem- 
bers of Congress, State Legislatures, doctors, lawyers, farmers, and in- 
deed almost all departments of business were here represented, not one 
of whom was tainted with any crime."* 

Forts Lafayette, Warren, McHenry, the old Capitol at Wash- 
ington, and other places of confinement were crowed with inno- 
cent citizens who had been arrested without legal warrant in all 
sections of the North and in the border States ; and these vic- 
tims of Federal power were subjected to indignities and outrages, 
the recital of which yet fires a freeman's blood with honest 
indignation. Citizens of almost all ages and conditions of life 
were compelled to wear the chains of despotic power, such as 
Americans in their palmy days would have broken with vindic- 
tive fury ; and consigned the destroyer of their country's peace 
and constitutional liberty to a felon's cell, there to await his doom 
on Haman's gallows. Persons who had the misfortune to be 
incarcerated in one of these filthy Federal fortresses, were for 
months not even informed of the accusations that had been 
alleged against them ; and the most studied efforts seemed to be 
made by the despot and his minions to degrade the manhood of 
those in their custody. 

The miserable wretches, clad in Federal uniforms, who acted 
the jailor's role in these bastiles, in guarding those who had re- 
sented a tyrant's will, conscious of their degredation, were but 
too anxious to reduce to their own level, the noble spirits they 
held in custody. But they found in their keeping those whose 
spirit no oppression could bend ; and who chose to endure for 
months and years the prison and oppression of despotism, rather 
than gain their freedom by dishonorable concessions. Many a 
patriot was subjected to the rigor and petty tyranny of a shoulder- 
strapped turnkey who compelled them to submit to the taunts 
and insults of the sentinels placed over them by day and night. 
The prisoners were reprimanded, yea, even punished, should 



* American Bastile, p. 516. 



278 A REVIEW OF THE 

they dare to retort or resent the scoffs of the boorish soldiers, 
who stood over them as guardsmen. They were not even per- 
mitted to leave their quarters to visit a fellow-prisoner, unless 
leave were granted them hy some sergeant whose loyal uniform 
indicated his master's service. The wives and friends of the 
inmates, who came to visit them, were not allowed access until a 
pass were obtained from Secretary Stanton, or some other mag- 
nate of Federal authority.. And even when admitted, the con- 
versations of the prisoners with their relatives, were limited to an 
hour, and that in the presence of the Commandant. 

The black inquisitorial system of incarceration was germinated 
in a desire to repress all critical investigation of the acts and con- 
duct of the revolutionary party ; and those especially were the 
victims of this si>ecies of despotism, who were perceived to be 
most likely to influence public opinion, and thus thwart perhaps 
the designs of the revolutionists. Can history determine aught, 
but that the man who wielded the whole executive power of the 
nation, and by whose sanction all these tyrannous outrages upon 
constitutional freedom were enacted, was anything save a demon 
incarnate, who, under the guise of humanitarian impulses, tramp- 
led upon the rights of his countrymen l His name, in spi te of 
all party efforts to enshrine it in hallowed recolloction, will be 
written upon the same darkened pages upon which those of 
Louis XI and Lucretia Borgia stand inscribed. 

Besides the restrictions that almost totally precluded intercoui'se 
with the friends and relatives of the prisoners, the interposition 
of legal counsel, that agreeable solace in times of difficulty was 
peremtorily forbidden. In being thus precluded from securing 
the assistance of gentlemen learned in the law, to bring their 
cases before the judicial tribunals of the country, another Article 
of the Federal Constitution was trampled upon, which prescribed 
that in all criminal prosecutions, " the accused shall have the assist- 
ance of counsel for his defense." On the 3d of December, 1861, 
the commanding officer at Fort Lafayette came to the prisoner's 
quarters and read a document signed by a Federal satrap, in 
which was the following language : 

"I am instructed by the Secretary of State to inform you, that the 
Department of State will not recognize any one as an attorney for politi- 
cal prisoners, and will look with distrust upon all applications for release 
through such channels, and such applications will be regarded as addi- 
tional reasons for declining to release the prisoners." 



rOLITIOAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 279 

Of all the States in the Union, Maryland suffered most from 
the tyranny of the Federal administration. In September, 1881^- 
the Democratic Members * of the Legislatm*e of this State were 
arrested by orders of the Government, and conveyed to Federal 
fortresses, because of their known sentiments which were hostile to 
the party in power. The pretence alleged was, that they were 
concerting a scheme to have the State secede, and unite its for- 
tunes with the Southern Confederacy. But this excuse lacked 
;i.ll basis, as at the time of the arrest, the Northern Government 
l;.ad its tyranous heel upon the neck of a people who could not 
but revolt in sentiment against the invasion of its sister Southern 
States, and the inauguration of the desj^otism they witnessed. 
The pretence of the Federal Administration was further desti- 
tute of foundation, because, that at the Special Session of the 
Maryland Legislature, called by Governor llicks in April, 1861, 
the question of secession was fully disposed of and determined. • 
The session opened on the 26th of that month, and on the follow- 
ing day a Select Committee of the Senate reported an address to 
the people of the State, in which occurs the following language : 
" We cannot but know that a large portion of the citizens of Maryland, 
Lave been iiaduc9d to believe that there is a probability that our delibera- 
tions, may result in the passage of some measure, committing this State 
to sece-sion. It is, therefore, our duty to declare that all such fears are 
without foundation. We know that we have no constitutional authority 

\ 

*The following is the statement of S. T. Wallis, Chairman of the Com- ) 
mittee on Federal Relations, of the Maryland House of Delegates: "I 
w.is a member of the Maryland Legislature in 1861, and was arrested at 
midnight at my dwelling, in the City of Baltimore, about tlie middle of 
September, 1861 ; from wliich time until the 27th of November, 1862, I 
was confined in one or other of tlie fortresses of the United States, which 
have been appropriated by Mr. Lincoln for the use of State prisoners. I 
have never been informed of the grounds upon which I was arrested. 

" The commission, consisting of Messrs. Dix and PierreiDont, which 
was created by the Secretary of W^ar, for the examination of the cuses 
of prisoners arrested and confined like myself, held a session at Fort 
Warren in May, 1862 ; but I was not vouchsafed any communication as 
to the charges against me or any opportunity of being ]ieard in my own 
defense. The commissioners, in fact, took no notice of my existence. 
Counsel I was not permitted to employ, for as early as the 28th of Novem- 
ber, 1861, the United States Marshal, at Boston, visited Fort Warren for 
the purpose of commu iicating to my fellow prisoners and myself an 
order from Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, announcing that no one 
would be recognized by this Department (which then had charge of us) 
as attorney of any State prisoner ; and that the employment of counsel 
by any of us, would be regarded by him as a sufficient reason for the 
prolongation of our imprisonment. On the 26th of November, 1882, I , 
was released from Fojt Warren without conditions or explanations of j 
any sort. The authority for my discharge, as I suppose for my arrest J 
was a telegram."— iVeio York Worll, Dec. 30, 1833. ' 



280 A REVIEW OF THE 

to take such action. You need not fear that there is a possibility thai 
we will do so." 

In the House of Delegates, at the Special Session, the question 
of secession also came up, on the petition of 216 voters of Prince 
George County, asking of the Legislature of Maryland the pas- 
sage of an Ordinance of Secession without delay. On the 29th 
of April, this petition was referred to the Committee on Federal 
Relations. This Committee submitted both majority and min- 
ority reports, in the former of which, the following language 
occurred : 

" That in their judgment the Legislature does not possess the power to 
pass such an ordinance as is prayed for, and that the prayer of the memo- 
riahsts cannot be granted. " 

The minority of this Committee begged leave "to report un- 
favorably to the prayer of the memorialists." From that period 
down to the forcible suppression of the Legislature by Mr. Lin- 
coln's orders, the subject was never again mooted, but was con- 
sidered on all hands as absolutely and permanently disposed of. 
With personal liberty, the freedom of the press also sunk 
beneath the weight of the Lincoln despotism. As early as Sep- 
tember, 18G1, several of the leading Democratic newspapers of 
I^ew York were suppressed by orders from Washington, and the 
editors conveyed to Fort Lafayette, where they were detained at 
the pleasure of the administration. Many independent presses 
in the border States and in other sections of the ISTorth, were 
compelled either to moderate their tone of hostility to the ruling 
powers, or suspend their piiblication. Some of the most resolute 
editors chose the latter alternative, which was generally accom- 
panied with free ingress into a governmental bastile. To many the 
alternative was not presented ; and the doors of a Federal fort- 
ress fastened upon them, before they were made aware of the 
charges that were preferred against them. The sum of all their 
sinning consisted in their belief in the principles of the Yirgini.i 
and Kentucky resolutions ; and in occasionally attempting to 
argue in their papers that the Constitution warranted no military 
coercive force for the maintenance of the Union. Many, indeed, 
known simj)ly to entertain these views of the Constitution, were 
subjected to incarceration in a military fortress for the utterarice 
of sentiments that in others would have escaped all animadver- 
sion. 

" If a Democratic paper did not proclaim war with the zeal of 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 281 

a lloliamedan, and denouncG all who oj)posed it with, the appro - 
brious epithet of " traitors^'' and recommend them as fit subjects 
for the '■'•roiie and halter,''\the editor himself was liable to receive 
these delicate attentions.""'* Should a paper contain sentiments 
severely reflecting upon the Administration, for the inauguration 
of the war, or otherwise condemning its policy, a crowd of ex- 
cited citizens, instigated by some pimp of power, was likely to 
assemble and demolish the office from which the offending sheet 
made its appearance ; and likewise maltreat the editor, should he 
be so unfortunate as to fall into their hands. Many papers in 
different parts of the Korth were destroyed by infuriated mobs 
of lawless citizens, who had been instigated in their conduct by 
men who stood high in the coniidence of Republican leaders ; 
and from whom a word of dissuasion would have been sufficient 
to prevent the outrage. Persons who desired to figure in com- 
munity as respectable personages, would make remarks calculated 
to inspire the mob-element like the Eastern college President, 
who declared himself as " opposed to tarring and feathering trai- 
tors ;" but who added tliat he " was forced to admit that this 
act had at times 'been well done.''^ It is apprehended that it would 
require no logician to deduce the intent of this loyal Puritan's 
remarks. And in scarce a single instance where the law had 
been violated, was adequate satisfaction able to be obtained ; for 
prejudice ran to such extremes that Democrats, with the greatest 
difficulty, could secure justice at the hands of partisan courts 
and juries. Indeed, citizens of all grades of outspoken anti-war 
opinions, were villified with all kinds of abuse during the whole 
continuance of the rebellion ; and the word traitor or copperhead 
would often be heard by them, whilst walking the streets and 
engaged in the pursuit of their daily avocations. 

Early in 1862, an order was issued transferring the matter of 
arbitrary arrests to the War Department. From tliis department 
a proclamation emenated by order of President Lincoln, which 
in itself virtually subverted republican government, inasmuch as 
Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, was authorized to appoint a 
number of men to constitute a corps of provost marshals, clothed 
with authority, in addition to their military duties, to arrest any 
citizen throughout the country. These marshals were appointed 

* American Bastile, p. 119. 



!:33 A REVIEW OF THE 

and proved an annoyance to peaceable citizens in all sections of 
the unrebellions States ; they had it in their power, npon indefi- 
nite charges, to arrest any person against M-hom accusations 
might be alleged, and for this purpose they were warranted to 
call in military aid to sustain their authority. They were required 
to report to the central power at "Washington, and hold prisoners 
in custody subject to its authority. In truth, these provost mar- 
shals were vested with imperial power in their respective dis- 
tricts, and could order the arrest of any citizen whatever, without 
dread that their conduct would be subjected to an investigation. 

In Maryland, Missouri and other Southern States, commission- 
ers were appointed, under military authority, who proceeded by 
a kind of illegal inquisitorial surveillance, to take cognizance of 
the acts and even sentiments of their fellow-countrymen ; and 
those whom these judges determined to be sympathizers with 
treason, were arbitrarily assessed certain sums of money by way 
of assessments upon their property ; and compelled under pain 
of confiscation to liquidate these assessments.* Assessments of 
this kind, purporting to be sanctioned by marshal law, but in- 
flicted in districts where no authority warranted its proclamation, 
were palpable violations of the Constitution, which prescribes 
that no individual shall be "• deprived of life, liberty or property 
without due process of law." And though the establishment of 
these extraordinary tribunals may in many instances have been 
the work of executive subordinates, still their existence could not 
escape the notice of the Washington authorities, or endure with- 
out their sanction. 

But as the war against the Southern States and people was 
inaugurated in conflict with the plainest principles of republican- 
ism, and in accordance with those of imperialism, it nmst of 
necessity be in the same manner sustained. There was no other 
way of sustaining a war which the framers of the Constitution 
never designed to be proclaimed. W^hen the Northern armies 
had overrun portions of Tennessee, North Carolina, and other 
Southern States, and overthrown the State authorities, President 
Lincoln, without any constitutional warrant whatever, appointed 
Military Governors for those States, in order thereby to re-erect 
State authority. Andrew Johnson was appointed Military Gov- 



*New York World, Sept. 20th, 1863. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 283 

ernor of Tennessee, and Edward Stanley of North Carolina ; 
and others were again assigned as the Military Executives of 
other States. Thaddens Stevens was too able a lawyer to be 
willing to stultify himself by claiming that such appointments 
found support in the Federal Constitution. He and his special 
school of radical followers ignored all restraint of the Constitu- 
tion, averring that they acted outside of that charter, and in 
accordance with the law of nations ; but seeing the absurdity 
and hypocritical audacity of President Lincoln, who assumed to 
be guided by that instrument, on the 9th of December, 1862, 
he spoke as follows : 

" I see the Executive one day saying', you shall not taJce the property of 
rebels to pay the debts ivhich the rebels have brought ujion the Northern 
States. Wliy ? Because tlie Constitution is in the way. And the next 
day I see him appointirfg a Military Governoi* of Virginia, a Military 
Govenor of Tennessee, and some other places. Where does he find any- 
thing in the Constitution to waiTant that ? 

" If he must look there alone for authority, then all these Acts are 
flagrant usurpations, deserving the condemnation of the community. 
He must agree with me, or else his acts aie as absurd as they are unlaw- 
ful ; for I see him here and there ordering elections fqr Members of Con- 
gress, wherever he finds a litt'.e collection of three or four consecutive 
plantations in the Rebel States, in order that men may be sent here to 
control the proceedings of Congress, just as we sanctioned the election 
held by a few people at a little watering place at Fortress Monroe, by 
which we have here the very respectable and estimable member fi'oni 
that locality." 

But the culminating point of Executive despotic innovation on 
3onstitutionalism was reached, when President Lincoln issued his 
proclamation declaring the emancipation of the negro slaves in 
the rebellious States. If the ruler of a people was ever guilty 
of the violation of faith, solemnly plighted in his own and the 
declarations of his party, it was in this instance. From the 
origin of the Republican party in 1855, the only object to be 
obtained by this organization, as gathered from the declarations 
of its leaders, the utterances of its presses, and its so-called 
national platforms, was to prevent the further extension of slavery 
into free territory. During the campaign of Fremont in 1850, 
and again of Lincoln in 1860, the Republican leaders solemnly 
repudiated all designs of interfering with slavery in the Southern 
States. They were unanimous in their solemn declarations, that 
they neither possessed the power nor the inclination to meddle 
with the institution where it existed. The Constitution was 



284 A REVIEW OF THE 

pointed to as an obstacle to any apprehended designs tliey might 
be supposed to entertain, as to the eradication of slavery in the 
States where it already had a legal existence. 

But revolutionary partisans do not stop for obstacles. They 
can readily find excuses (as in the instance of the wolf and the 
lamb) to abandon their assurances, and seize the objects which 
form the centre of their designs. It was so in the case of the 
Republican party. From the composition of their party, and 
the enthusiasm which it arroused in the breasts of the undis- 
sembling Abolitionists, it was apparent that the ultimate aim of 
the party was universal emanicipation, much as the leaders strove 
to conceal this. In this. Southern and Northern conservative 
statesmen were not deceived, as they repeatedly j)redicted. But 
the achievement of this object must depend upon circumstances. 
That it would surely be the result of Republican success in the 
nation could easily be affirmed, when the principles were con- 
sidered. It was a necessary sequence. The poison lay in that 
dogma of their creed, that would give to the majority of the 
people of the United States, a right to determine questions in 
which those of the several States had constitutional interests. It 
was, in a word, to allow democracy to override constitutionalism. 
This itself, an efflux of centralization, the product of imperialistie 
rule, was subversive of all constitutional guarantee, and 'calcu- 
lated to awaken serious alarm in the minds of thinking men both 
l^orth and South. It was sure to overwhelm the ancient State- 
right landmarks, as soon as a party of these principles gained 
control of the General Government. , 

The emancipation decree of Abraham Lincoln was simply the 
legitimate fruit of Republican teaching, and an aim of the party 
that was striving for the social and political equality of the negro 
race. Though its promulgation had been from the first fully 
resolved upon, yet in the estimation of the President and liis 
confidential advisers, its further postponement might have been 
judicious. Public opinion, as the President feared, was scarcely 
prepared for the measure. But the pressure of the ardent eman- 
cipationists, amongst whom Mr. Stevens ranked conspicuous, 
compelled the Executive, as it were, to issue a proclamation 
which but a few days before he had declared could prove of no 
utility to the Abolition cause. The Massachusetts Republican 
State Convention, however, had assembled some days prior to its 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 285 

issue ; and tliis body had declined to give the President the usual 
resolution of confidence, which every Chief Magistrate expects of 
his party. Mr. Lincoln was deeply wounded by this indignity in 
the very citadel of Republicanism ; and he must hasten to do 
penance for his transgression. He understood what the slight 
of his party betokened. A secret meeting of New England 
Governors liad also been held which indicated no confidence in 
the Administration. The Republican State Convention of the 
Empire State was soon to assemble at Syracuse ; and it behooved 
the President to endeavor to obviate a new animadversion upon 
his conduct, such as he had experienced in the Bay State. 

Besides, the novelty of enlisting for the three months' war had 
subsided. The soldiers and the people had been deceived by the 
Republican orators and journals ; and additional recruits were 
needed to fill up the depleted ranks of the Northern armies, held 
at bay by the Confederates. Additional deception was again 
required. Indeed, it was the constant pabuhun of the soldiers, 
and the easily deluded people, during the struggle. The rebel- 
lion was always just upon the brink of yielding. Governor 
Andrews, of Massachusetts, and other radical statesmen, now 
predicted that so great enthusiasm would follow the promulgation 
of emancipation, that the roads would be crowded with soldiers 
M^ho would flock to the national escutcheon to defend the cause 
of universal humanity. 

Indeed, the deception practised by men in power during this 
time was of the very grossest character, and if for no other 
reason, the names of those who practised such fraud and imposi- 
tion, should be written upon tablets of contempt, and handed 
down for execration to the remotest posterity. A worthy cause 
needs not such means for its execution. But the means em- 
ployed have sown the seeds of such social and national demorali- 
zation, that Republican Government is no longer able to perpet- 
uate liberty, honor and integrity, and but time is required to 
evolve a new order of things. 



2S3 A REVIEW OF THE 



CHAPTER XVIL 



LEGISLATIVE IINCONSTITUTIONALISM, 



Wlien the elements and fundamental principles of the Repub- 
lican party is considered, it will not seem strange that the Con- 
stitution, after the inauguration of war against the South was 
found to interpose but a sKght check npon the lawless invasion 
of civil rights. The enthusiastic, self-stvled reformers, whose 
opinions of right can tolerate no contradiction ; the Maine liquor 
advocates whose efforts to remodel society had for years been dis- 
tracting social order ; and the narrow ecclesiastical sectaries, who 
can only see moral evil in distorted visions ; all these and others 
of like character had become consolidated into one ao-orreo-ated 
mass of turbulent agitators. This agitating array of fanatical 
zealots, found its home in that political organization termed the 
Republican. Abraham Lincoln and the majority of the Thirty- 
seventh Congress, were the choice of that party of the American 
people largely composed of the enthusiastic classes, whose zeal 
ever surpasses their wisdom. 

That the Republican President and the Members of Congress 
chosen on the same ticket with him, shonld be persons of the 
same characteristics as the partisans to whom they owed their 
election, was to be expected. The discussion of the slavery 
question had largely eliminated the zealous classes from the 
Democratic party, and attached them to the new organization 
that was combatting the institution of Southern slavery. These 
all were fired by the same zeal for the emancipation and eleva- 
tion of the negro race, as had been Innocent III. and his coadju- 
tors in the establishment of the Roman inquisition. The spirit 
of persecuting ecclesiasticism was again to be witnessed upon a 
new arena ; and the maddened zeal that flamed forth as in fiery 
volumes from the J^orth, was the result of the sincere desire 
upon the part of the ardent classes for the extirpation of the 
Southern institution. It was, however, in itself that same prin- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 287 

ciple that ever destroys civil organism and leaves but a wreck of 
ruins in its path; and which, perhaps, prepares the minds of 
the reflecting classes for the disagreeable reception of imperial- 
istic, when constitutional Kepublican Government has failed. 
The reformer and the statesman are designed to occupy very 
variant spheres in the world's life, and never can with safety be 
exchanged. The philosophic ruler holds the scepter even, between 
all conflicting opinions', and permits none to overstep the bounds 
of constitutional order ; but the zealot becomes the mediseval 
iconoclast, or the persecuting prelate who causes rivers of blood 
to flow, that the souls of men be not endangered. 

The war from its inception was waged with a spirit of malice 
and vindictive hatred, such as had been witnessed in modern 
warfare but once (during the French revolution) since the period 
of the religious wars of Europe, daring the 16th and ITtli cen- 
turies. The ancient animus was revived, the dial of time was 
turned back for centuries, and all the guarantees of constitution- 
alism which philosophic ages had secured, were madly and 
fanatically overturned in the wild and delusive hope of elevating 
to equality with the Caucasian, a race totally incapable of even 
sustaining the fruits of civilization. Negro liberation and eleva- 
tion being the sole objects to be achieved by the fiery enthusiasts 
who gave life and soul to the Eej)ublican party, it would have 
been contrary to all experience had not vindictiveness ruled the 
hour. "Were it to be expected that zealots, who esteemed the 
emancipation of four millions of negro slaves, the great blessing 
of the 19th century, would at all be lenient and tolerant in meas- 
ures for the achievement of the result ? Since the commencement 
of the civil war, the union of the States instead of being 
any longer a league with death and a covenant with hell, had 
become at length the great centre of their fondest hopes. Men 
of enthusiastic aspirations, had ascended the seats of power, bent 
upon wresting the ancient fabric of the Eepublic from its foun- 
dations; and fully determined upon breaking down all those 
parts of the Constitution that interposed obstacles to their de- 
signs. The legislation at the extra session of Congress in 1861, 
was chiefly confined to the granting of men and money to the 
Administration for the prosecution of the war of invasion against 
the South. But as " out of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
sjpeaketh ;" so from the utterances and conduct of Thaddeus Ste- 



288 A REVIEW OF THE 

vens, Sumner and otlier leading members of Congress, it was 
already clearly apparent to an observer, that tlie Federal Consti- 
tution, would be found to interpose slight resistance to the 
designs of these most extreme partisans and radical revolutionists, 
"wlio now found themselves in position to so shape the laws of the 
nation, that their emancipating designs might be fully ultimated. 
The Constitution having conferred no authority upon the Presi- 
dent or Congress to make war against the seceding States, was it 
to be anticipated that no further invasions of that instrument 
would take place ? 

The resolutions submitted by Members of Congress, and the 
majorities that endorsed these, exculpating the blockade of the 
Southern coast, the illegal arrests of innocent citizens and other 
unconstitutional acts of President Lincoln, clearly demonstrated 
that ulterior objects to the preservation of the Union and the 
Federal Constitution, M^ere entertained by the leading men of 
both branches of Congress. 

An initiative measure was enacted near the close of the session, 
which declared the confiscation of all the slaves employed with 
the consent of their masters to further the cause of the rebellion. 
The object of the war to a discerning eye was clearly portended 
in this enactment, but the people of the Border States and the 
Democrats of the Korth were assured that this was simply a 
military measure that the laws of war demanded. It was one, 
however, that Napoleon had disdained to make use of in his 
wars with Russia, although repeatedly solicited to employ it. 
But the European Emperor was lighting for conquest, the Ameri- 
can Congress, though professing the same, for emancipation. 

When the 3Tth Congress assembled in December, 18G1, an 
advanced attitude on the slavery question, as we have seen in a 
former chapter, was presented ; and fully matured plans seemed 
to have been agreed upon, by Sumner, Wilson, Stevens, Lovejoy 
and other leading radicals. There was nevertheless a number of 
conservative Pepublicans in Congress who strove to defend the 
Constitution to the best of their ability ; but whom a deluded 
public opinion, either kept for the most part in radical traces, or 
democratic quarters ultimately gave them refuge. The Con- 
OTessmen of this character were either reflective thinkers or sound 
constitutional statesmen, whose districts and States had become 
abolitionized ; and they as politicians, must either yield to the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 259 

current or retire from public life. Those chose the latter alter- 
native with whom conscience ruled supreme. 

On the 11th of December, 1S61, Senator Trumbull, a Eepub- ^- 
lican, offered the following resolution : 

" Resolved, That the Secretary of State be directed to inform the Sen- 
ate, whether in the loyal States of the Union any person or persons have 
been arrested or imprisoned, and are now held in confinement by orders 
from him or his Department ; and if so, under what law said arrests 
have been made and said persons imprisoned." 

• In support of his resolution, and speaking of illegal arrests, 
the Illinois Senator said : 

"The unconstitutionality of such action as this seems to be admitted 
by the Senator who conies to the defense of this despotic power. Why, 
sir, the power — without charge, without examination, Avithout oppor- 
tunity to I'eply, at the click of the telegraph — to arrest a man in a peace- 
able iDcriion of the country, and imprison him indefinitely, is the very 
essence of despotism. What, sir, becomes of constitutional liberty, what 
are v.'e fighting for if this broad ground is to be assumed and to be jus- 
tified in this body, and any man is to be thanked for assuming an uncon- 
stitutional and unwarranted authority ? What are we coming to, if 
arrests may be made at Ihe whim or the caprice of a Cabinet Minister? 
Do you suppose he is invested with infalibility, so as always to decide 
aright? Are you willing to trust the liberties of the citizens of this 
country in the hands of any man to be exercised in that way? May not 
his order send the Senator from Connecticut or mvself to prison ? Why 
not?" 

Most of the Ivepublicans in the Senate opposed the above reso- 
lution of Senator Trumbull, many of them warmly justifying 
the President for all the arrests he had caused to be made ; and 
as only Democrats, whom they chose to entitle traitors, had 
been made to suffer, they had no fault to find with the 
Executive Department of the Government. Sei;iator Fessenden, 
of Maine, expressed the sentiments of the majoritv fh the follow- 
ing language : 

"Indeed, I know, that under the directions from the Secretary of 
State, certain individuals in the loyal States have been arrested and im- 
prisoned. That is notorious ; the whole country is aware of it. I will 
say here, that I do not believe there is the slightest wai-rant of law for 
any such proceedings, and I do not suppose that you will find a lawyer 
■who does think there is any warrant of law for such proceedings, and yet 
I do not shrink from it. I justify the act, although it was against law. 
I justify it from the necessity of the case." 

The resolution of Senator Trumbull was consigned by a vote 
of the Senate to its lethean tomb, the Committee on the 
Judiciary. 



290 A REVIEW OF THE 

Besides the unconstitutional measures passed at tliis session of 
Congress, and clearly intended to advance the cause of emanci- 
pation, some of wliicli have been detailed in a former chapter, 
others of the same character, both of a direct and indirect nature, 
and yet designed to effect similar aims were likewise enacted. A 
monetary crisis supervened with the close of the year 1861, in 
the general bank suspension, and the wheels of coercive govern- 
ment were likely to stop, unless the herculean might of despotic 
power could be invoked, also to relieve the financial condition. 
This crisis was enhanced, because of the constant delusion that 
had been practised upon the public mind, that the war would 
be of but from sixty to ninety days duration. Indeed, the men 
at the helm of government, dared not to disclose to public view 
the delusion* that had been perpetrated, although themselves 
well aware of it, through fear of the general alarm it would 
occasion. In that event, thej^ feared that a peace party at the 
North would be likely to grasp the reins of power, and thus the 
aims of the revolutionists would be baffled. The public for a 
time had freely loaned of their money to support the Govern- 
ment, but Congress being as yet fearful to enact laws to tax the 
people, the sinews of war were at length exhausted. 

But doubtless it had been from the first apparent to Salmon 
P. Chase, the Head of the Treasury Department, that the solution 
of the problem committed to his charge would necessitate a 
complete revolution in the financial affairs of the country, in 
order to enable the government to prosecute the war with suc- 
cess, against the seceded States ; and for that length of time, 
which his discerning mind must have assured him, that it would 

*Those who had the sagacity to perceive the delusion and Ihe courage 
to expose it, were denounced by the intensely loyal hypocrites, as traitors 
and deserving of the severest ijunishment. It was incumbent vipon one 
who desired to be esteemed a friend of the Union, that he be willing at 
all times to deceive his countrymen. As an illustration of the deception 
practised by the leading men, the following extract from a speech of 
Representative Morrill, of Vermont, of February 4, 1862, is cited : " We 
are urged by the gentleman from New York to pass this bill as a war 
measure, a measure of necessity ; and to enforce this idea he gives you 
the figures of our probable requirements, if the war should be prolonged 
until July 1st, 1863. Sir, I have no expectation of being required to sup- 
port a war for that length of time. The ice that now cliokes up the 
Mississippi is not more sure to melt and disappear with the approaching 
vernal season, than are the rebellious armies upon its banks, v. hen our 
Western army shall break from its moorings, and rushing with the cur- 
rent to the Gulf, baptise as it goes in blood the people to a fresher alle- 
giance." — Congressional Globe, 2d Session of Thirty-seventh Congress, 
Part 1, p. 630. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 291 

be necessary to do so, to effect their subjugation. This was in- 
deed a necessity, when our form of Government be taken into 
consideration. The principles upon which the States had united 
to form a union, based upon consent, had, as we have seen, been 
violated by the declaration of war to coerce those that had seceded. 
That in itself was the assumption of imperial power by the 
General Government, which had never been delegated to it. 
The war was at first pretended to be prosecuted upon republican 
principles, and by means of voluntary loans. For the first three 
months money was freely furnished to the Government, because 
the people expected its speedy termination ; and for the next six 
months loans were with still increasing difficulty secured upon 
republican principles. The effort on the part of the Government 
to conduct a war, anti-republican in its character, by means of 
republican principles, was absurd, self -contradictory, and simply 
designed for the delusion of the Northern people. This, Secre- 
tary Chase and all the leading officials of his party, from the 
first must have clearly perceived, otherwise they were utterly 
incompetent for the positions they were chosen to fill. 

But theirs was the party of revolution, and it behooved them to 
proceed with cautious steps, so as not to alarm the people, until 
the sections had become so far entangled in the conflict, and the 
Northern people so embittered in the carnage that the peace 
party would be impotent. The same sagacious shrewdness, there- 
fore, was required by the Secretary of the Treasury and the 
revolutionary element in Congress to get the financial affairs so 
shaped as that the administration could control the national purse, 
as it was also designing to do with the sword. 

The monetary crisis that took place at the close of the year 
1861, was but the natural sequence, therefore, of the incongru- 
ous effort to wage a monarchical war upon republican principles. 
It was. in short, only circumstances necessitating the revolutionary 
monarchists to show their real designs ; and with the greatest 
dexterity and adroitness was this essayed before the country. 
Secretary Chase, in his report of July 5th, 1861, and also in that 
of December 9th of the same year, suggested his plans by which 
he deemed it feasible that the national purse might be grasped in 
order to further the work of abolitionism. The great work to 
be achieved by his party for this purpose, was to obtain the over- 
throw of the principle of State Sovereignty, so far as the same 



293 A REVIEW OF THE 

in any wise conflicted with the central antliority now fully re- 
solved upon negro emancipation. For tliis purpose the currency 
of the country must undergo a radical change from what it had 
heretofore ever experienced. Mainly, therefore, in accordance 
with the suggestions of the Secretary in his reports, a bill was 
matured by the Committee of Ways and Means, of w^hich Mr. 
Stevens was Chairman, and submitted to the House on the 30th 
of December, 1861. This bill proposed the issue of one hun- 
dred millions of Treasury notes, Mdiich with the fifty millions 
of demand notes already in circulation, should be a legal tender 
for all claims due the Government, and also, for all debts public 
and private within the United States, whether the same were 
already due, or to be collected in the future. 

This was indeed a revolutionary movement of revolutionary 
men ; but many of the conscientious adherents of the Republi- 
can party refused to give it their sanction, because of its utter 
violation of all justice and equity and of the whole spirit of tlio 
Federal Constitution. A cardinal principle of that fundamental 
charter which the legal tender clause of this measure proposed to 
repudiate, was that which declared that no State shall imss any 
laxo iin])air'mg the obligation of contracts ; and it was one, the 
denial of which up to this period no American statesman had 
been bold enough as to conceive. But because this prohibition 
had not been ap]3lied in express terms to the Government of the 
United States, the Republican majority in Congress, had the 
audacity to introduce and sustain a measure plainly void and un- 
constitutional. Secretary Chase, in his letter of January 29th 
to Mr. Stevens, also gave his approbation to the legal tender 
feature of the Treasury JNTote Bill,* but at the same time ex- 

*Afterwards, when success had crowned the AboUtionists, and Salmon 
P. Chase had been elevated to the most honored seat upon the Supremo 
Bench of the United States Court, he could speak in language that in 
18G2 would have been denounced by the loyal as treason. Speaking of 
the prohibition imposed by the Constitution upon the States to "pass any 
law impairing the obligation of contracts," Chief Justice Chase said : 
" It is true this prohibition is not applied in terms to the Government of 
the United States. Congress has express power to enact bankrupt laws, 
and we do not say that a law made in the execution of any other express 
power, which inc dentally only impairs the obligation of a conti-aci, can 
" be held to be unconstitutional for tliat reason. 

"But wo do think it clear that those who framed and those wlio 
adopted the Constitution, intended that the spirit of this prohibition 
should pervade the entire body of legislation, and that the justice which 
the Constitution was oixlained to establish, was thought by them to bo 
incompatible with legislation of an opposite tendency. In other words. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 293 

pressed his loathing fox such legislation. On this point he said : 

" It is not unknown to them (the Committee) that I have felt, nor do I 
wish to conceal, that I now feel a great aversion to making anything but 
coin a legal tender in payment of debts." 

Much, however, as conseinnce interposed, so great was his zeal 
in the cause of negro emancipation that he did not have the moral 
courage to utter his protest against a measure for which he well 
knew there was no warrant in the Federal Constitution. The 
necessity for such legislation was even insisted upon by him, as 
a means of prosecuting the war with success against the South. 

The Democrats in both Houses of Congress, and some of the 
ablest Republicans opposed the passage of the Legal Tender Bill, 
with a stubborn resistance that no radical measure since the inau- 
guration of Abraham Lincoln had encountered. It was shown 
to be entirely revolutionary in its character, and in conflict with 
the universal legal thought of the country, from the foundation 
of the Government. The opinion of no jurist, publicist or 
statesman was able to be cited by the advocates of the measure 
favorable to their position ; but the declarations and writings of 
the most eminent men were adduced, combatting the views of 
the revolutionists. Daniel Webster, the great expounder of the 
Constitution, in his speech upon the renewal of the charter of 
the United States Bank in 1832, spoke as follows : 

"Congress can alone coin money. Congress can alone fix the value of 
foreign coin. No State caai coin money. No State, not even Congress 
can make anything a tender but gold and silver in payment for debt-s." * 

Webster again expressed the general thought of the country 
on this question, in his speech in the Senate on the Specie Cir- 
cular in 1836, in which he held the following language : 

"Most unquestionably there is no legal tender, and there can be no 
legal tender in this countiy under the authority of this Government, or 
any other, but gold and silver — either the coinage of our own mints, or 
foreign coin at rates regulated by Congress. This is a Constitutional 
principle, perfectly j)lain, and of the highest importance. The States 

we cannot doubt that a law not made in pursuance of an express power, 
which necessarily and in its dii-ect operation impairs the obligation, is 
inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution." — Hepburn vs. Griswold, 
in American Law Register, 1870, pp. 187-8. 

The Svipreme Court of the United States, in the above case of Hepburn 
vs. Griswold, decided that the clause in the acts of 1863 and 1863, making 
United States notes a legal tender in the paj^ment of ail debts, public 
and private, is, so far as it applies to debts contracted before the passage 
of these acts, unwarranted by the Constitution. 

*Webster's Speeches. Vol. 3, p. 81. 



294 A REVIEW OF THE 

are prohibited from making anything but gold and silver a iDayment of 
debts ; and although, no such prohibition is applied to Congress, yet as 
Congress has no power granted to it in this respect but to coin money 
and regulate the value of foreign coin, it clearly has no power to substi- 
tute paper or anything else for coin as a tender in payment for debts, and 
in discharge of «ontracts." "" 

An array of intellectual men in Congress, of both parties, as 
before stated, placed themselves in opposition to the passage of 
the Legal Tender Bill, and strongly argued that the measure was 
unconstitutional ; and one that would launch the country on a 
sea of irredeemable paper currency, amidst whose billows the 
ship of free government might ultimately submerge. Roscoe 
Conlding, a Republican Representative from I^ew York, spoke 
as follows on the constitutionality of the question : 

" The proposition is a new one. No precedent can be urged in its favor ; 
no suggestion of the exis'.ence of such a j)ower can be found in the legis- 
lative history of the country ; and I submit to my colleague, as a lawyer, 
the proposition that this amounts to aflBrmative authority of the highest 
kind against it. Had such a power lurked in the Constitution, as con- 
strued by those who ordained and administered it, we should find it so 
recorded. The occasion for resorting to it, or at least referring to it, has, 
we know, repeatedly arisen ; and, had such a power existed, it would 
have been recognized and acted on. It is hardly too much to say, there- 
fore, that the uniform and universal judgment of statesmen, jurists, and 
lawyers, has denied the constitutional right of Congress to make paper a 
legal tender for debts to any extent whatever. But more is claimed here 
than tlie right to create a legal tender, heretofore unknown. The pro- 
vision is not confined to transactions in futuro, but is retroactive in its 
scope. It reaches back and strikes at every existing obligation."! 

The same gentleman depicted the moral effect of such legisla- 
tion, in the following words : 

" But, sir, passing as I see I must from the constitutional objec- 
tions to the bill, it seems to me its moral imperfections are equally 
serious. It will, of course, proclaim throughout the country a saturnalia 
of fraud, a carnival of rogues. Every agent, attorney, treasurer, trus- 
tee, guardian, executor, administi'ator, consignee, commission-merchant, 
and every debtor of a fiduciary character, who has received for others 
hard money, worth a hundred cents on the dollar will forever release 
himself from liability by buying up, for that knavish purpose, at its 
depreciated value, the spurious currency which we wiU have put afloat. 
Everybody will do it, except those who are more honest than the Ameri- 
can Congress advises them to be.":j: 

Georo-e H. Pendleton, a distinguished Democratic Represen- 

__ . I 

* Webster's Works. Vol. 4, p. 271. 

^Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, part 1, pp. 634-5. 

XCongressional Globe, Second Session, 37th Congress, Part 1, pp. 634-5. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 295 

tative from Ohio, argued the unconstitutionality of the measure, 
and the intrinsic inequity of a hiw that would attempt to unset- 
tle all fixed values and unjustly confiscate, as it were, the credits 
of every man in the community. He predicted the calamitous 
consequences of such legislation as follows : 

*' You send, these notes out into the world, stamped with irredeemability. 
You put on them the mark of Cain ; they will go forth to be fugitives 
and vagabonds on the earth. What then will be the consequence ? It 
requii-es no prophet to tell what will be their history. The currency will 
be expanded ; prices will be inflated ; fixed values will depreciate ; in- 
comes will be diminished ; the savings of the poor will vanish ; the 
hoardings of the widov/ will melt away ; bonds, mortgages, notes, every- 
thing of fixed value Avill loose their value ; everything changeable will 
be appreciated ; the necessaries of life will rise in value ; the Govern- 
ment will pay two-fold — certainly largely more than it ought — for every- 
thing that it goes into the market to buy ; gold and silver will be driven 
out of the country."* 

The radical republicans supported the Legal Tender measure 
of their party, believing it to be a matter of necessity to enact the 
same, to accomplish the subjugation of the Southern people. 
Belonging to that school of interpretation which professed to be 
able to find in the Constitution, any power that they deemed 
necessary for the national weal, it was not difficult for the leaders 
to find support in that instrument for any species of legislation, 
which they desired. They however, favored the measure be- 
cause it was germinated in monarchical principles, and because 
such were needed upon the financial arena, and such as already 
had been and were to be introduced into the other avenues of 
the Government. 

The measure was of a monarchical character, as it relied upon 
force for the circulation of the notes to be issued, looked to the 
direct and despotic coercion of arms, over-rode both the letter and 
spirit of the Constitution, shocked every principle, not only of 
justice between the Government and the citizens, but also be- 
tween the citizens themselves, and of all sound political philoso- 
phy. That the Legal Tender Bill was simply a part of the 
financial scheme of Secretary Chase and the influential mpn of 
his party, to subsidize to their control the monied interests of the 
country, C. L, Yallandigham, of Ohio, had the clearness of vision 
to perceive. In his speech of February 3d, 1862, this patriotic 
and sagacious statesman uttered the following words : 

^'Congressional Globe, Second Session, 37th Congress, Part 1, p. 551. 



293 A REVIEW OF THE 

"Tlie notes are meant to circulate generally and permanently as cur- 
rency, at least till the Secretary's grand fiscal machine, his magnficent 
national paper mill, founded upon the very stocks provided for by tliis 
bill, can be put in operation, Avhen this sort of bills of credit are 
to become the sole currency of the country, and to drive all gold and 
eilver and ordinary bank paper out of circulation." 

The main argument urged in behalf of the bill was its neces- 
sity, and that no express Avords in the Constitution forbade such 
an enactment. 

The friends of the measure denied that more than one hun- 
dred and fifty millions of legal tender bills would need to be 
issued by Congress ; and in these denials we have another ex- 
ample of the deceptions method pursued by the Eepublican 
leaders to conceal the magnitude of the rebellion ; and it was one 
whose Janus-faced visage was ever presenting itself during the 
whole progress of the war. Thaddeus Stevens, who was a warm 
friend of the Treasury Note Bill, in reply to a question pro- 
pounded to him on the 6th of February, 1862, said: 

" But my distinguished colleague from Vermont, fears that enormous 
issues would follow to supply the expenses of the war. I do not think 
any more would be needed than the $150,000,000." 

But this assurance proved, like most otliers emenating from 
radical sources and made with reference to the duration and the 
expenses of the war, simply deceitful ; and especially so in this 
case ; it having been uttered by a man who had the sagacity 
from the commencement of hostilities to somewhat clearly meas, 
ure the magnitude of the rebellion, and the length of time and 
the vast expenditures that would be required to overthrow it. 
Instead of one hundred and fifty millions being found sufficient, 
ver}^ many additional hundred millions of legal tender notes 
were necessary to be issued to perfect the great work of emanci- 
pation, and allow the tide of war to fully inundate and deluge in 
blood the States of South. 

Another necessary feature of the financial scheme was that 
which imposed the requisite taxes upon the people to support the 
Government demands. The imposition of these was, however, 
made with the greatest caution ; for it was perceived that noth- 
ing would so surely open the eyes of the masses as the infliction 
of onerous taxation. The Ttepublicans steadily resisted the enact- 
ment of a sufficient internal revenue law as long as possible ; 
and acquiesced in supporting such a bill only when circumstances 



rOLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 2C7 

forced tliem into the measure. By tlie Act passed August 5tli, 
18G1, it was estimated that twenty millions of revenue could be 
raised ; but that sum was by no means adequate to support the 
wants of the Government. 

During the second session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, the 
question of revenue became a pressing one, upon the attention of 
Congress, and all schemes were resorted to in order to press off 
the consideration of so unpleasant a concern. The elections of 
1862 were nearing themselves, and the agricultural interests of 
the country required to be handled with the greatest caution that 
political managers could employ. A revenue bill was at that 
time of all things most needed to sustain the wants of the ad- 
ministration, as Secretary Chase in his reports had undissem- 
blingly shown. Congress at length found itself comj)elled to 
take up the consideration of this question. Mr. Stevens, the 
Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means in March, 
1862, submitted a complicated tax bill, which the members of 
the Committee had for nearly two months been busily engaged 
in elaborating. In the bill, as submitted, almost every con- 
ceivable tax was imposed upon manufactures, the profits of 
trade and industry, and the incomes of individuals. The most 
studied effort was made in the preperation of this system of rev- 
enue, so as to allow the agriculturists seemingly to escape from the 
burdens imposed. But the escape was only aj)parent, for upon 
the cons^^mers ultimately fall the taxes of the community. The 
fallacious, hypocritical scheme, however, served as the blind to 
hide the enormous bui'dens that the revolutionary party was neces- 
sitated to impose upon the people, in order to carry through their 
designs of emancipation and negro elevation; and which was 
but a part of the centralizing plan they had in view in their war 
against the South. 

This revenue bill met in Congress with no steady party oppo- 
sition, for, although its whole features had a centralizing tendency, 
yet the Constitution clothed the law making body with the power 
to raise taxes. It is evident from the discussions in Cong-ress, 
that a decided aversion was felt by all real Democrats to the pas- 
sage of the bill, inasmuch as they were conscious that the money 
to be raised by it was to be expended for an unconstitutional 
and altogether anti-republican purpose. William II. Wadsworth, 
a Kepresentative from Kentucky, made no concealment of his 



203 A REVIEW OF THE 

opposition to tlie measure, on account of tlie known objects to be 
achieved in the prosecution of the war against the seceded States. 
The bill, after a long deliberation in both Houses of Congress, 
became iinally a law on the 1st of July, 1SC2. 

This Internal Revenue Bill was very long and minute in its 
details, almost every transaction of business being obliged to 
submit to the imposition of stamp duty. This repulsive feature 
of British rule, that had aroused our revolutionary ancestors to 
resistance against the Crown of the mother country, was imposed 
by the radical Congress, and was submitted to by the people, be- 
cause large armies and dictatorial satraps compelled obedience to 
the Federal Administration. But it was very unwillingly obeyed 
by a large body of the people, who somewhat faintly realized 
the objects to be promoted by the money wrung from the 
people by relentless partisans professing humanitarianism, yet 
rioting in the overthrow of Constitutionalism. A tax of three 
j)er cent, was levied upon all manufactures, and upon all incomes 
upwards of six hundred dollars. All professional gentlemen and 
men engaged in various departments of industry, were addition- 
ally taxed by means of licenses, and compelled either to pay the 
same for the advancement of abolition ideas, or withdraw from 
the occupation of their lives. 

But as abolitionism and all other fanaticisms must necessarily 
accompany each other, it would have been remarkable had not 
the total prohibition influence, made itself felt in the internal 
revenue legislation of Congress. Representative Morrill, of Ver- 
mont, one of the flrst to explain the features of the bill, declared 
that the object of its f ramers was to impose upon the liquor trafic 
as heavy a tax as possible, so as to repress that trade to the 
utmost of their power. As a member of the American mon- 
archical party, he could cite British precedent for such discrimina- 
tion, with regard to duty on liquors, and said : 

"In England, the duty on spirits is ten shillings and five pence, or 
about $3.53, per gallon." 

Another Representative, a Member from Maine, a Mr. Rice, 
true to the principles of his State fanaticism, spoke as follows : 

" I would not discriminate, partially, against any citizen engaged in 
any honest and reputable business ; but I would to the fullest extent im- 
pose excise duty on liquor and tobacco, let it come from whatever source 
it may, or let it injure whom it may. If men are driven out of this 
business, it will be all the better for the country. I was in favor of tha 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 200 

amendment proposed by the gentleman from Kentucky, because I under- 
stood it, though not so intended by him, to be an absolute prohibition 
against distillation. If Congress would only put down, either by direct 
or indirect means, these distilleries that pour out fire and death over all 
the land, I think it would be performing a good work. It would be doing 
more good to the people than any other enactment it can pass. 

" I hope the day will come when a prohibition will be put upon all 
distillation ; when such a tariff will be placed on spirituous liquors as 
will exclude their importation. That will be a glorious day for the 
country."* 

In the author of the last cited extract, we hear one of the 
ancient holy Pharisees and hypocrites, who would seem to have 
arisen from the dead ; and who sets himself up as more pure and 
righteous than all other men ; and whose opinions must he 
accepted as the whole rule of rectitude and moral probity. His 
doctrines admirably harmonized with the hidden monarchical 
sentiments of his party, but were altogether in disharmony with 
the principles he professed to advocate, that is to say : the free- 
dom of all men. His own and the principles of his party would 
allow all to be free to the extent that his infallible judgment and 
despotic will would permit. Delightful freedom indeed was ifc 
that he and his fanatical Maine law compeers advocated. 

A tax of about one hundred per cent, was imposed by this act 
upon spirituous liquors, which, by subsequent acts, was largely 
increased, all with the design of indirectly excluding by a species 
of Maine liquor law legislation, all kinds of spirituous, vinous 
and malt liquors from circulation in the community. The article 
of tobacco was likewise highly taxed in the Revenue Act of 
July 1st, 1862, because this article had also been condemned aa 
mi worthy of trafie in Puritan estimation. 

The revenue to be raised by this act, estimated as about to yield 
$150,000,000, was a burden greater than was borne by the citi- 
zens of the most despotic governments of Europe ; and yet so 
thoroughly deluded were the masses of the people by abolition 
fanaticism, that they seemed to yield their necks with pleasure 
to the burdens. But after submitting to the load, they ever 
afterwards were unable to relieve themselves ; and the despots 
only continued to further lade the servilely adapted beings who 
had so ignobly yielded to their sway. They had unwittingly 
assumed a constantly accumulating load of debt, which, as Wen- 

*Congressional Globe, Second Session, 37th Congress, Part 3, p. 1809. 



SOO A REVIEW OF THE 

dell Pliillips, one of the task masters, liad the candor to admi!", 
would weigh down themselves, then' children and descendants, to 
remote generations. A happy thought, indeed ; possibly endur- 
able, had the compensation therefor only been of an adecpate 
character. But it is doubtful if fanaticism be competent to grasp 
that idea. Probably the conception is too logical, save for minds 
rarely seduced by fanatical delusions. 

An inquisitorial spirit also displayed itself in the radical legis- 
lation of almost every character. The bill passed by Congress 
and approved July 1st, 1862, which stamped the Mormon matri- 
monial unions as criminal violations of social polity that deserved 
severe punishment, especially evinced this spirit in a marked 
degree. Lack of logical perception allowed the law-givers in this 
instance to forget that they were the boasted chamj^ions of lib- 
erty, both civil and religious, and being such, Mormondom was 
equally entitled with themselves to enjoy that privilege. But 
like their prototypal predecessors of the liildebrandian and 
Cromwell ian cast, they reserved to themselves the right to dictate 
what should be esteemed liberty. And in this they were not in- 
consistent with themselves, for fanaticism ever assumes the holiest 
mantle, much as it tramples, as in this case, upon the plainest 
constitutional guarantees. 

But whilst trampling upon the Constitution of their country, it 
behooved the Republican leaders likewise to bid for popular sup- 
port at the expense of governmental traditions, and by the most 
lavish and prodigal expenditures. After the enactment of the 
Homestead Law in 1862, an Act in conflict with the conservative 
teaching of early legislators, they must annul the well settled 
internal improvement principles of former Presidents and states- 
men, in the passage of the Union Pacific Railroad and Telegraph 
Line, from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, a 
seemingly malicious zeal appeared to animate Mr. Stevens and 
the leading radicals in Congress, to effect in every particular as 
complete an overthrow and removal of the rubbish of the old 
constitutional edifice of the fathers, as was possible to be con- 
ceived. The existing Constitution, with its spirit and traditions, 
had been the work of slave holders and their allies ; and all this 
must be remodelled, lest some foul taint might soil the new 
superstructure. 

An oath to support the Federal Constitution, the only pledge 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 801 

lieretofoi'G required of the American citizen or ruler, was no 
longer deemed a sufficient guarantee of official incumbents, that 
thej would discharge their functions with that fidelity wliich 
duty required. Pretended dread of future turbulence induced 
the revolutionary Congress to exact of evei'^y person elected or 
appointed to any office of honor or profit under the Government 
of the United States an oath of office, to which no conscientious 
Southern resistant of the abolition tyranny would be able to sub- 
scribe. This unwise effort to exclude from public trusts the 
participants in the so-called rebellion in the event of their over- 
throw, was still further proof that the advocates of such measures 
lacked the capacity of far-seeing statesmen, who always strive to 
harmonize, rather than provoke conflicting opinions. But arti- 
fice and craft were the large ingredients that influenced the parti- 
san legislation of the last named character, and which was 
designed chiefly to exclude in future from power, those most 
competent to combat and circumvent the designs of the revolu- 
tionary legislators themselves. 

A legal principle of universal application that had been coined 
in the jurisprudence of the mother country* and which in 
essence was made a part of the Constitution of 1787 ; and also 
of all the different States of the Union, that every offender shall 
be tried by a jury of his peers, was next to be wiped from the 
statute book of the nation. By the Act of July 16, 1862, Con- 
gress, fearful to run in open violation of the plain letter of the 
Constitution, which declared that in treason the " trial shall 
he held in the State where the said crimes shall have been com- 
rrbitted" nevertheless repealed the Act of 1789, which required, 
in cases punishable with death, that twelve jurors be summoned 
from the county where the offense was committed. In the repeal 
of that act, the spirit of the Constitution was equally violated, as 
had the enactment directed, that a jury drawn from a different 
State than that in which the offense was committed, should be 
intrusted with the trial of criminals. Such legislation was also 
the product of necessity, as the revolutionists clearly foresaw that 
no convictions for treason could be secured in any of the Southern 
States, unless under a species of packed jury system, which this 
law of July aimed to establish. 

During the second session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, the 
conflscation of the property of rebels, became a question of lead- 



S03 A REVIEW OF THE 

ing importance ; and one that was discussed in both Houses at 
some length. The ardent advocates of confiscation were impelled 
solely by the desire to secure the emancipation* of the negro 
slaves by an indirect measure of this character ; as no other so 
feasible a plan presented itself to the revolutionists to secure, 
under the guise of legislation, objects not warranted by the Con- 
stitution. Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, had the candor to 
confess, during the discussion of this question, tliat emancipation 
was the main feature of the confiscation movement that especially 
interested him. Sufficient laws were already in existence to 
punish treason of every grade ; and it would have been time to 
enact further penalties when the rebellion was overthrown and 
the national authorities in condition to determine of what crime 
the Southern rebels were guilty. 

But as the freedom of the Southern slaves was the grand 
object of the war, and as the Constitution of the United States 
forbade Federal interference with the affairs of the States, some 
kind of legislation must be excogitated to gratify abolition aspi- 
ration. The punishment of treason was within the power of 
Congress to determine ; and this body was free to fix penalties, 
however severe, provided that " no attainder of treason shall work 
corruption of blood and forfeiture, except during the life of the 
person attainted." The framers of the instrument which inter- 
posed this check upon national legislation, had witnessed in 
history the cruel excesses of sanguinary despots from the days of 
William the Korman, to Oliver Cromwell ; and they were un- 
willing that the innocent descendants of convicted traitors should 
be made to suffer for the crimes of their ancestors. Whilst, 
however, this restraint was il\e result of the molifying current 
of a refined civilization that had gradually obliterated the asperi- 
ties of earlier epochs, it was this same obstacle that produced 
such anxiety in the Republican party to devise means, notwith- 



*Senator Saulsbury, of Delaware, addressing the Abolition Senators, 
June 24th, 1863, said : "Your purposes are known, — your motives are 
understood. The present knows them and history will record them. Did 
not slavery exist in the Southern States, you would never have thought 
of a confiscation bill. Your design is to make this a war for the destruc- 
tion of slavery. You desire to destroy the domestic institutions of the 
States. Abolitionism will be satisfied with nothing less than universal 
emancipation ; and abolitionism would not prosecute this war another 
day or another hour, were it not for the hope that these objects may be 
accom. ■lished.'" — Congressional Globe, Second Session, 87th Congress, 
Part 4, p. 2901, 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 303 

etanding this, to accomplish their main purpose, emancipation. 
To this end, one bill after another was prepared by abolition 
members of both Houses of Congress, all having the same fond 
object in view. C. A. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, spoke in the 
following manner of these bills : 

" The Chairman of this Committee, to whom had been referred all the 
wild, mad and unconstitutional bills, twenty in number, has given to the 
House the two bills under consideration. I have carefully collected al 
of these bills. I shall have them bound, and with an appropriate title- 
page preserved, that they may remain and be read after the excite- 
ment of the day shall have subsided ; that those who may survive me 
shall take warning from the evidences which they afford, of an utter 
disregard of the Constitution of the country, and the danger to civil 
liberty which such disregard threatens. And if our liberty and consti- 
tutional Government shall survive the assaults made upon it at this hour, 
or if it should fail, then they may find among the many causes of its 
overthrow, these evidences of the reckless efforts of legislators to substi- 
tute passion for patriotism, as a rule of action, in the exercise of official 
duties and powers."* 

Horace Greeley, in his history of " The American Conflict^'' 

speaks of the cautious method by which the Republican party 

approached the question of confiscation : 

" The policy of confiscating or emancipating the slaves of those en- 
gaged in the rebellion, was very cautiously and timidly approached at 
the first or extra session of this (37th) Congress. Very early in the ensu- 
ing session, it was again suggested in the Senate by Mr. Trumbull, of 
Illinois, and in the House by Mr. Elliott, of Massachusetts."t 

The position which first secured a somewhat unanimous ap- 
proval amongst the revolutionary leaders in both Houses of 
Congress, was that which asserted for the military arm of the 
Government, the right to break the shackles from the limbs of 
the Southern slaves in order to weaken the cause of their masters. 
This bold and sweeping advance of the extreme Abolitionists 
was altogether too radical a change for timid and conservative 
Hepublicans ; and the proposition besides encountering the united 
opposition of the Border State Congressmen and Northern Dem- 
ocrats, also met a warm resistance from Senators Cowan, of 
Pennsylvania, Browning and Collamer, of Yermont, who de- 
nounced it as in glaring antagonism with the Federal Constitution. 
* Out of the boiling caldron of radical Senatorial views, a bill 
was prepared which proposed to clothe President Lincoln with 

* Appendix to Congressional Globe, Second Session, 37th Congress, p. 260. 
f Greeley's Conflict, vol. 2, p. 2G2. 



804 A REVIEW OF THE 

cliscretionery power to proclaim free, the slaves of all persons 
who should be found in arms after a definite period. 

In the House, a similar vehement contest was fought, over the 
question of confiscation of rebel property ; and finally, two bills 
were reported from the Judiciary Committee that seemed to 
accord in the main with the known sentiments of radical Sena- 
tors. The one provided for confiscating the real and personal 
property of rebels against the government; and the other for the 
emancipation of their slaves. In vain did the Democrats, Border 
State Kepresentatives, and certain Conservative Kepublicans, 
argue the unconstitutionality of these measures ; and to no pur- 
pose were they shown to violate all the principles of modern 
warfare among civilized nations. Judge Thomas, of Massachu- 
setts, a Conservative Eepublican, spoke of these bills as follows : 

" That the bills before the House are in violation of the law of nations 
and of the Constitution, I cannot — I say it with all deference to others — 
I cannot entertain a doubt."* 

But though unconstitutional and violative of all modern inter- 
national codes, the revolutionists must of necessity enact laws of 
the most extreme rigor against the rebels and their property ; so 
that under the pretence of wholesale confiscation, they would be 
enabled to secure the great prize, the freedom of the slaves. No 
doubt many members of Congress, such as Thaddeus Stevens, 
Owen Lovejoy, and others, would ardently have desired to see 
the most extensive confiscation of rebel property that was possible 
to be secured ; but the honest Abolitionists, who were influenced 
by moral principle, rather viewed the proposed severity in the 
confiscation movement as a feint to cover the real object to be 
grasped, emancipation. At least it was never seriously believed 
by any great number of Abolition Congressmen, that they would 
be able to inflict upon the South any general system of property 
confiscation. The measure, however, proved admirable for agita- 
ting purposes, and in the preparation of public opinion for par- 
tisan objects. 

Both the Confiscation and Emancipation Bills introduced into 
the House, passed that body but failed to meet the approbation 
of the Senate. Although this latter body contained a large 
number of the most radical Abolitionists, still a majority were 
unwilling to go to the extreme length of enacting that all kinds 

*Greeley's Conflict, vol. 2, p, 3j4. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. SOo 

of property should, be wrested from rebel control witboiit judici- 
ally action, and by the mere force of Executive fiat. The bills 
which had received the approbation of the one body of Con- 
gress, were upon a conference between the Senate and House of 
Representatives, so modified as to form one act providing for 
both confiscation and emancipation. In this shape the bill became 
a law and received the Presidential assent. 

The main feature which the Senate impressed upon the confis- 
cation scheme, was that which contemplated the conviction and 
^mnishment of traitors by due legal process, before their property 
could be legally sequestered. And yet little credit seems due to 
Senators who preferred to have the enactment in conformity 
with the Constitution in one particular, v/hen in another they 
were not at all careful to regard it. For it was alone the knowl- 
edge that the assent of President Lincoln would otherwise be 
withheld from the bill, that induced Congress, very reluctantly, 
to declare by resolution that the act was only intended to operate 
upon the life interest of convicted traitors. 



306 A REVIEW OF THE 



CHAPTER XVm. 

GOVERNMENTAL CONSOLIDATION REACHED. 

When the Thirty-seventh Congress met on December 1st, 
1862, the Government had thrown aside all disguise that its 
future policy should embrace emancipation as a means of weak- 
ening the rebellion. President Lincoln had seemingly permitted 
himself to be dragooned, by his active abolition partisans, into 
fulminating the proclamation of September 22d, which, by the 
beginning of the new year, should set all the slaves in the rebel- 
lious States in absolute freedom ; and yet a more unwise measure 
for the accomplishment of that object was scarcely conceivable, 
as the President himself expressed it, in his interview with the 
Chicago divines, a few days prior to its promulgation. It could 
scarcely be believed, even by the most enthusiastic champions of 
negro liberation, that a paper proclamation, issued by the Execu- 
tive of one of the contesting sections of the country, would be 
able to emancipate the slaves of the other more rapidly than the 
progress of arms warranted. But fanaticism reasons not, it sym- 
pathises, agitates, and runs counter to the rules of ratiocination i 
and in this instance, having engulphed philosophical forecast in 
clamor, it could do what at another time would have been utterly 
impossible. 

The enactment of a few measures were still demanded of the 
American Congress, in addition to the numerous unconstitutional 
encroachments already made, in order that the consolidating pro- 
gramme of the revolutionary party might have a linished and 
symmetrical contour. The union of the purse and sword, a 
necessity of despotism, was the grand desideratum yet to be 
accomplished in the subversion of the rights of the States and of 
the immunities of the people. The traditionally recognized 
power of the States must be overthrown by every possible means, 
and no conceivable method seemed to promise greater results in 
this du-ection than the establishment of a national banking sya- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 307 

tern. A national bank was one of the darling projects of Alex- 
ander Hamilton, the idol of Federalism and its successors ; and in 
the history of American politics it proved one of the onerous 
burdens that always weighed upon the shoulders of those who 
favored its establishment. 

And although a National bank had ceased to be a question in 
American politics since the period of John Tyler's administration, 
yet with the advent of Eepublicanism to power, the new brood 
soon betrayed their parentage in the advocacy of the old measures 
which Webster himself had declared obsolete. So thoroughly 
grounded, however, had become the opposition of Americans to- 
wards a bank of the United States, that the establishment of an 
institution of this character was deemed hazardous ; and was only 
attempted after the leaders had discovered that the will of the 
people could with safety be defied, with large armies in the field 
from which all information dangerous to party success, could 
easily be excluded. And again, for the purpose of avoiding tte 
popular objections which stood coined in the general mind against 
the establishment of a national bank, the scheme was varied by 
proposing a bill to incorporate banks in all sections of the country. 
A very captivating variation, indeed, was it, and one promising 
popular advantages to business circles. The danger of a national 
bank proving a political engine in the hands of whatever party 
might happen to control the Government, the main evil foreseen 
b}^ President Jackson was equally great, whether one central 
establishment were created or thousands of banks with national 
privileges, because the latter, equally with the former, would be 
subordinate to federal control. 

The establishment of a system of national banks, was believed 
by the revolutionary leaders to be one of the most efficient means 
to subvert the rights of the States, and draw all authority into 
the hands of the General Government. In this manner it was 
hoped that objects could be grasped by a species of monarchical 
encroachment, which otherwise were unattainable ; and that a 
grand central government, nearly resembling that of Great 
Britain, could be established in the midst of the turbulence and 
excitement of the rebellion. Indeed, Alexander Hamilton him- 
self had predicted that the Federal Government would prove a 
failure ; and that it would only, after a time, be molded into 
consistency when it should have experienced the shock of war. 



308 A EEVIEW OF THE 

That Federal aspirations prompted tlie warm advocates of the 
national banking scheme, seems disclosed in the following extract 
from the speech of Elbridge G. Spaulding, a Republican Rep- 
resentative from New York, of February 19th, 1863. Mr. Spaul- 
ding said : 

"It is now most apparent that the policy advocated by Alexander 
Hamilton, of a strong central government, was the true policy. A 
strong consolidated government would most likely have been able to 
avert the rebellion ; but, if not able to prevent it entirely, it would have 
been much better prepared to have met and put down the traitorous 
advocates of secession and State rights, who have forced upon us this 
unnatural and bloody war. A sound national bank upheld and supported 
by the combined credit of the Government, and rich men residing in all 
the States of the Union, would have been a strong bond of union before 
the retellion broke out, and a still stronger support to the Government 
in maintaining the army and navy to put it down." 

The national banking system deduced its whole genealogical 
descent from monarchical principles. Its successful inauguration 
depended upon the suppression of the State banks, which existed 
constitutionally, as the Supreme Court of the United States had 
authoritatively declared ; and which the General Government 
had no delegated power, either directly or indirectly, to supjDress. 
But, when men could be found that had the boldness openly to 
declare that Congress had the right to appoint a dictator, as 
Thaddeus Stevens had already done, it is not strange that any 
kind of bill could be enacted depriving the States of their clear 
and constitutional authority to establish banks with State charters. 
During the discussion on the l!^ational Bank Bill, the right of the 
States to create banks was not questioned ; but a sufficient tax 
was imposed in the bill upon the circulation of the State banks, 
as would compel them to exchange their notes for the new ones 
to be issued b}'' the General Government. It was, in brief, sim- 
ply a new method of indirectly doing that which the Constitu- 
tion, as interpreted by the highest judicial tribunal of the country, 
had forbidden to be done. 

The National Banking Bill met the approval of the most 
revolutionary Republicans of both Houses of Congress ; and 
received the sanction of President Lincoln February 25th, 1863. 
It encountered, however, the united opposition of the Democracy 
and of a considerable number of the more conservative Repub- 
lican Members of Congress, in the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives. In the Senate, such Republicans as Coilamer, Cowan, 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. S09 

Grimes, Howard and Trumbull, refused to support the measure. 
The Demos-rats in general viewed the bill as one of the con- 
solidating measures designed to wrest power from the States and 
strengthen the central authority. Senator Powell, in his speech 
of February 10th, 1S63, said: 

*'It is a grand scheme of consolidation; one that, in my judgment, 
will become dangerous to the public liberties, and I believe that it should 
not be forced upon the people of the States, particularly when it is forced 
there to destroy their banking institutions." 

Senator Davis, in his speech of February 11th, said : 

" This is a bold and daring attack upon the State banks, * * » 
I think it is the most stupendous and most dangerous scheme of policy 
that was ever introduced in a deliberative bodj'." 

That the National Bank Bill was of an altogether revolutionary 
character, Senator Howard contended in his speech of February 
11, 1863, in which he used the following language : 

*' It contemplates a general revolution in the banking and currency 
system in this country ; and it is admitted by its advocates as being in- 
tended to bring about an extinguishment of all the State banks by means 
of the machinery which is to be employed under the provisions of the 
bill." 

The unconstitutionality of the bill was argued by Senator 

Collamer as follows : 

'• In the case of Kentucky, the Supreme Court decided, that the long 
continued usage in this country in States to make banks was constitu- 
tional, and that a State had a right to make a bank of issue. * * * 
Now, sir, if a State has that right, it has the right certainly, independent 
of the consent of Congress. Does it hold it at the will of Congress? 
Certainly not. The United States, in making a United States Bank, held 
it independent of State action, and it was so decided. If the State has 
this right and has it independent of the consent of Congress, it cannot 
have that right if the United States can tax it out of existence. Hence, 
I say, the United States have no more power to tax a State institution 
out of existence, than a State has to tax a United States institution out 
of existence." 

The Federal Goverament, by the passage of the bank bill, 
had become the keeper of the people's purse ; the sword must 
next be grasped, and then the power of the States and the citi- 
zens thereof could with impunity be defied. Men, as well as 
money were in abundance for a period, after the inauguration of 
the war, in answer to the calls of the President ; but time dis- 
closing the great deception that had been practised, neither could 
any longer be had in such quanties as the exigency demanded. 



310 A EEVIEW OF THE 

Congress, at its extra session in 1861, had given antlioritj for 
raising vast armies ; and all the soldiers whose services could be 
secured were enlisted under various proclamations of the Presi- 
dent but still more were in demand to end a rebellion whose 
resistance had far surpassed the popular expectation. But the 
Republican method of filling monarchical armies raised for mon- 
archical purposes, soon displayed its incongruity as had been 
witnessed on the financial arena, and new plans were necessary 
to be adopted to save the revolutionary party from disintegration^ 
and its aims from failure, should a majority of the ISTorthern 
people discover the delusion that had been inflicted upon them. 

By tjie middle of 18G2, Northern patriotism was greatly flag- 
ging, because enlisting for the war was already discovered to be 
no holiday recreation, but a stern reality that few cared to en- 
counter, sftve those whom fancied sympathy for the negro had 
blinded into the espousal of the abolition cause. It was now 
perceived that the war steed of JS'orthern patriotism must expe- 
rience a slight goad from the spur of his furious rider, in order 
to enable him any longer to penetrate to the front of the battle, 
and grapple with his rebel combatant upon the field of Southern 
conflict. This slight prick was essayed in the passage of the Act 
of Congress of July 17th, 1862, which authorized the calling out 
by draft of the militia of the loyal States for nine months, for 
the suppression of the Southern armies, and the restoration of 
the national authority. 

But the rebellion against abolition domination, notwithstanding 
this, stood up in all its mighty strength and colossal magnitude. 
The enlisted legions of the North, from Maine to California, 
were sinking before the shafts of Southern resistance , and the 
invading armies had become so attenuated by the close of 1862, 
that more stringent means than had as yet been made use of, 
must be employed if the administration of Abraham Lincoln 
was to triumph over its stubborn foe. The might of Herculean 
despotism must be invoked to the rescue, or the flag of abo- 
litionism must lower its folds on the held of battle. Neither the 
war cry of freedom for an enslaved race, nor the peans of the 
victorious soul of the felon of Charlestown, marching to victory, 
were sufficient any longer to arouse martial ardor in the breasts 
of the enrolled soldiers of Northern fanaticism. 

The loathsome beast of despotic innovation now reared a more 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 311 

hideous aspect than it had as yet presented. An act was passed 
in both Houses of Congress ignoring all authority of the States 
over their own militia ; and subjecting all able-bodied men of the 
l^orth, between certain ages, to a merciless conscription, which 
found sanction neither in constitutional warrant nor in prior 
Anglo-Saxon history. Britain's Annals were scanned in vain for 
a model to subject to Presidential control the independent free- 
men of the North ; and resort was necessarily had to the conti- 
nental despotisms of the old world, which alone were able to 
supply a genuine copy. Charles J. Biddle, a Member of Con- 
gress from Pennsylvania, in his speech of February 23, 1803, 
grouped the Conscription Bill as one of that concatenation of 
measures which changed the whole fabric of the Government 
from a Republic into a consolidated despotism. In his speech he 
said : 

" This (the Conscription Bill) is a part of a series of measures, which to 
my mind seem materially to alter the structure of the Government un- 
der which we live. The bill to transfer to the President, without limita- 
tion of time or jDlace, our power over the writ of Habeas Corpus ; the 
bill of indemnity which, to use the words of the Senate's Amendment, 
secures for all wrongs or trespasses committed by any officer of the 
Government, full immunity, if he pleads in the courts of justice the 
order of the President, and which also deprives State Courts of their 
jurisdiction in such cases ; the bank bill, which puts the purse strings in 
the same hands with the sword ; these bills, to my mind, couple themselves 
with this bill, and they seem to me, taken together, to change the whole 
framework of this Government ; and instead of the Constitutional Gov- 
ernment, which was originally so carefully devised for this country, 
they leave us a system which does not materially differ, according to any 
definition I can frame, from the despotism of France or Russia." 

The passage of the Conscription Bill was found to be indispen- 
sable, because the abolition leaders perceived that the prosecution 
of the war, by means of enlisted soldiers, would surely prove a 
failure. Thaddeus Stevens, the Corypheus of abolition impulse, in 
the House of Pepresentatives already had declared on the floor 
of Congress, that no more volunteers could be had from the North ; 
and that other methods of filling the Union armies must be 
adopted. Vast numbers of soldiers who had voluntarily entered 
the Northern armies, afterwards deserted ; some because they 
believed the Administration had forsaken the principles upon 
which the war was originally prosecuted ; others did so, infected 
by the corrupt influences already everywliere prevalent. 

Benjamin F. Thomas, a Pepublican member of the House, 



312 A REVIEW OF THE 

from Massacliusetts, submitted liis reasons for the necessity of 
enacting the Conscription Bill, in the following language. lie 
said: 

"The policy inaugurated on the 1st of December, 1861, has been fruit- 
less of good. It has changed the ostensible, if not the real issue of the 
war. That policy, and the want of persistent vigor in our military 
counsels, render any further reliance upon voluntary enlistments futile. 
The nostrums "have all failed. Confiscation, emancipation by Congress, 
emancipation by proclamation of the President, compensated emancipa- 
tion, arbitrary arrests, paper made legal tender, negro armies will not do 
the work. Nothing will save us now but victories in the field and on the 
sea ; and then the proffer of the olive branch, with the most liberal terms 
of reconciliation and re-union. We can get armies in no other way, but 
by measures substantially those in the Bill before us, unless the Admin- 
istration will retrace its steps and return to the way of the Constitution."* 

The Democrats and Border State men of both Houses of 
Congress combatted the Conscription Bill with a zeal and ardor 
worthy of Charlemagne's paladins, and the knights of feudal 
history. But the conflict waged by these chivalric friends of 
their country in behalf of liberty and the Constitution, was 
nevertheless hopeless ; yet, impelled by motives of uncalculating 
patriotism, they rushed within the breach and yielded themselves, 
sacrifices worthy of immortal glory. Senator Bayard, of Dela- 
ware, in his speech of February 28, 1863, used the following 
language concerning the Conscription Bill : 

" From the foundation of the Government to this day, no attempt has 
been made in this country to pass a law of this character, by any Con- 
gress of the United States ; no such bill has been introduced ; no such 
doctrine as is involved in this bill has been contended for — that under 
the power to raise armies, you can raise them in any other mode than by 
enlistment or recruiting, or by the acceptance of volunteers. Has this 
power ever been attempted to be exercised by the Parliament of Great 
Britain, with all its omnipotence ? No !" 

Senator Kennedy, of Maryland, in the debate on this bill, said : 

" As to the bill itself, I look upon it as odious and despotic. It goes 
further to svibjugate the people of a free country than any I have ever 
read of in history." 

Senator Saulsbury, of Delaware, during the same debate, 

uttered the following sentiments : 

" I regard it as the crowning act, in a series of acts of legislation, 
which surrender all that is dear to the private citizen into the keeping 
and at the mercy of the Executive of this nation. * * * j 
assert, that under the law governing this administration, under the law 

*Annual Cyclopedia, 1863, p. 286. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 313 

as declared by the highest law officer of this Government, this bill not 
only authorizes the calling into the service of every able-bodied white 
man, but it authorizes the calling into the service of every able-bodied 
free negro, between the ages of twenty and forty-five, in the land. I 
say this because the Attorney-General of the United States has expressed 
the opinion, in writing, that the free negroes are citizens of the United 
States. * * * Sir, if the theory of this bill be the theory of 
your Government, if this be the power conferred upon Congress by the 
Constitution of the United States, tell me where is the difference between 
your form of Government and the most absolute and despotic form upon 
the face of the earth." 

The Conscription Bill received the assent of President Lincoln 
March 3d, 1863, and contrary to the patriotic wish of the older 
statesmen, the power of the purse and the sword was united. 
The passage of the ISTational Bank and Conscription Bills effected 
a complete revolution in the workings of the General Govern- 
ment, and though retaining the name of a Republic, no Empire 
in Europe now exerted a more absolute and despotic control over 
its citizens. 

Absolutism had been reached in the passage of these two last 
named bills ; but to round the figure more in harmony with 
Asiatic despotisms, all the unconstitutional excesses that had been 
committed since the advent of the Republican party to power 
must be condoned, and unlimited authority granted to the Fede- 
ral Executive to trample in future upon civil libei'ty. It was not 
enough to satisfy the abolition appetite that the Constitution had 
been ignored, the reserved rights of the States overthrown, and 
the liberty of the citizen set aside ; all these flagrant violations 
of right must be justified by an American Congress, intoxicated 
with the fumes of fanatical zeal and revolutionary incendiarism. 
It was a dark period in our history, when an assemblage of 
enthusiastic emancipationists had under deceptions colors stolen 
their way into the seats of representation in the ]!^ational Capitol, 
and at length had it in their power to repudiate all the traditions 
of the anterior epochs of the Republic, and desecrate the holiest 
sanctuaries of the people. • 

Thaddeus Stevens, the cool, calculating demagogue, like his 
prototype, Cardinal Wolsey, paying hypocritical adoration at the 
shrines of zealous humanitarianism, on the 8th of December, 
1862, brought into the Lower House of Congress a bill to indem- 
nify the President and other persons for suspending the privilege 
of the writ of Habeas Corjpus^ and acts done in pursuance 



814 A REVIEW OF THE 

thereof. Up to this period it would have been difficult to have 
discovered in the utterances of the real or pretended emancipation 
zealots, with a few exceptions, that anything had been done by 
the President and Cabinet, or by any of their numerous subordi- 
nates throughout the country, that was not in strict accordance 
with the Constitution and the laws of Congress heretofore en- 
acted. Had not an obsequious Attorney-General convicted the 
Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of 
error, when the latter decided that the suspension of the Habeas 
Corpus was the perogative alone of the Federal Congress? Had 
not the revolutionary party by their representatives in both the 
United States Senate and House fully endorsed that view of 
constitutional interpretation, and acted in entire conformity there- 
with ? Had not, again, a partisan press throughout the North, 
echoed the above sentiments to the eclat, and hurled anathemas 
and opprobrium upon the heads of those, who had the boldness 
and honesty to stand up and question the right of the President 
and his subordinates to suspend the Habeas Corpus^ and do what- 
ever else they might deem advantageous in furtherance of the 
abolition cause ? Tomes would be required to contain all the 
labored arguments that tilled to satiety the Northern press, de- 
signed to prove the entire constitutionality of the many violations 
of civil liberty, that were inflicted upon the citizens of the loyal 
States, and which would have driven to revolution the people of 
the most despotic governments of Europe ; and could only havo 
been perpetrated with impunity upon degraded serfs by the 
Ghengis Khans and Tamerlanes of history. 

But the introduction and party support of the Indemnity Bill 
to a philosophical mind, was clear and palpable proof of the 
conscious falsity of the abolition reasoning, which claimed to find 
support for the infractions of the Constitution in that instrument 
itself. Mr. Stevens was far too clear in his perceptions to be de- 
luded into the belief, that any sanction could be found in the 
Constitution for many acts to which he himself had freely given 
his adhesion. In supporting the admission of West Virginia, he 
had declared that there was no constitutional warrant for such 
action ; but contended that the measure was justified by the exi- 
gency of the times. On many other occasions he had expressed 
similar sentiments, defending his views nevertheless by political 
necessity, and not by any authority to be found in the Federal 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 815 

Constitution. At the beginning of the session of this Congress, 
he even had the boldness to declare upon the floor of the House, 
that he " had grown sick of the talk about the Union as it was, 
and the Constitution as it is." 

The bill of indemnity, as it passed the lower House of Con- 
gress, led by Mr. Stevens, was too open a repudiation of the 
Constitution to receive the unqualified approval of a more 
cautious Senate. This body, the majority of whom were equally 
desirous to enact a bill of general oblivion for all the illegal and 
unconstitutional acts of the President, "Cabinet, and all the infe- 
rior subordinates of the administration, was nevertheless more 
guarded in endeavoring to have its legislation apj^arently to con- 
form with the words of the Federal Constitution, so far as the 
same could be made to do so. Senator Collamer, of Yermont, 
took grounds of opposition to the constitutionality of the Indem- 
nity Bill, passed by the House, and prepared a substitute for it, 
which was reported by the Judiciary Committee of the Senate 
on the 2Tth of January, 1863. The main feature of the Senator's 
Substitute was that it provided for the removal to the Circuit 
Courts of the United States of all actions commenced, or to be 
commenced in the State Courts against persons who had violated 
the individual rights of their citizens. This was simply an in- 
direct method of reaching, as far as possible, the same objects 
sought by the Indemnity Bill of Mr. Stevens, that is to say, 
absolute immunity for all the past and future unconstitutional 
acts of the Federal administration and its satellites. It was per- 
ceived that were authority granted to remove actions from a 
State into a Circuit Court of the United States, the judges and 
jurors of which were the menials of Federal power, the absolute 
oblivion of these actions was well nigh reached. Whilst this 
bill was before the Senate, James A. Bayard, of Delaware, ex- 
pressed his views of the measure in the following language : 

"With the solitary exception of an amendment, proposed by the Hon- 
orable Senator of Ohio, which was originally rejected and afterwards 
adopted, there is nothing in the bill that does ought than advance us 
towards a despotic exercise of power. It refers not only to the past, but 
to the future action of the Executive of the United States, and it throws 
a shield over every act of aggression that he can commit against the 
rights of an American citizen ; and interposes a bar, in point of fact, to 
the right of recovery against even the individual who is the agent for 
the purpose of infracting those rights. * * * They (the friends of 



31G A PtEVIEW OF THE 

the measure) will have, by the pa'^sage of this bill, brought the legislative 
power into accord with the Executive, so as to prevent for past action 
and for future action of the Executive, any redress on the part of an 
American citizen, however great the outrage may have been. In my 
judgment, it would have been better to pass the House Bill. That is a 
plain, open, manly defiance of the Federal Constitution. This is more 
indirect. It is in some respects sustainable ; but 1 trust that in others, 
when it comes to the criterion of the Courts, it will be adjudged to be 
void and of no effect. It is useless to particularize now ; but whether it 
be done under cover of law, and whether it be sustained or not, it is, in 
my belief, equally true that the passage of the bill is but an advance 
towards a centralized despotism in this country."* 

The Senate bill having passed that body, came up in the House 
on the 18th of February, for consideration. Mr. Yoorhees, of 
Indiana, spoke at considerable length in opposition to the meas- 
ure. He said : 

" Sir :— The bill now before the House has no parallel in the history of 
this or any other free people. It is entitled ' An Act to indemnify the 
President and other persons for suspending the privilege of the Writ of 
Habeas Corpus, and. acts done in pursuance thereof.' But it embraces 
even more than its startling title would indicate. It gives to the Execu- 
tive and all his subordinates, not merely security for crimes committed 
against the citizen in tiraew past, but confers a license to continue in the 
future the same unlimited exercise of arbitrary power, which has brought 
disgrace and danger to the country. I propose, to the best of my ability, 
this day to show that neither indemnity for the past nor impunity for 
the future can be bestowed on those who have violated, and who propose 
further to violate the great and fundamental principles of constitutional 
liberty," 

After an extended debate in the House, the Senate's Substitute 
was rejected, and a Committee of Conference was appointed. 
This Committee reported a bill, which embodied a compromise 
of views between the two Houses ; but which to the unobserv- 
ant seemed to embrace new matter. One section of this Com- 
promise Bill authorized the President, at any time during the 
rebellion, and when in his judgment required, to suspend the 
privileo-e of the writ of Habeas Corpus throughout the United 
States or in any part thereof. In another section, provision was 
made for removing into a Cii'cuit Court of the United States any 
action " commenced in a State Court against any officer, civil or 
military, or against any other person for any arrest or imprison- 
ment made, or other trespasses or wrongs done or committed, or 



* Annual Cyclopedia, 1863, p. 253. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 817 

any act omitted to be done, at any time during tlie present rebel- 
lion, by virtue or under color of any authority derived from or 
exercised by or under the President of the United States, or any 
Act of Congress." 

The bill, as submitted by the Committee of this Senate and 
House of Representatives, met the approbation of the majority 
in both these bodies ; and receiving the sanction of President 
Lincoln March 3d, 1863, became a law. This act completed the 
series of measures which completely changed the character of 
the Government from a confederation of States, into what his- 
tory should entitle the Tnonarchically consolidated American 
Union. With the enactment of this series, the legislative revo- 
lution was completed. The party of fanaticism had at length 
introduced their principles into the workings of the General 
Government ; it next behooved them to sustain these upon the 
battle held, and thus carry forward and complete the social revo- 
lution, towards which they looked with anxiety. 

The purse and the sword had now been gi-asped in one hand, 
and civil liberty, the birth-right of every American freeman, was 
wrested from its deposit, the Constitution, and committed to the 
keeping of Abraham Lincoln. This Chief Magistrate, whose 
oath demanded obedience to the Constitution and a faithful exe- 
cution of the laws, though a guilty participant in the sacrilege 
of robbing his country's Magna Charta, became by the act 
of his criminal compeers, the repository of the sacred emblems 
of civil right, which anterior ages had bequeathed. Freedom 
ceased to be any longer what its name signified. From that 
period forward every American citizen possessed only such 
liberty us the Federal executive saw proper to accord him. The 
President had it in his power, by virtue of the act of Congress, 
to order the arrest and incarceration of any citizen in the broad 
arena of the Union ; and no authority in the States or in the 
Federal Judiciary could withstand the dictator. His will, though 
feeble, was absolute, and that of the fiendish Nero and the tyrants 
of the French revolution was no more. These earlier despots 
were able to deprive of liberty whomsoever they chose ; so could 
the American President. 

Abraham Lincoln and his guilty associates in crime were voted 
by the Rump Congress entire immunity for all offences that any 
of them, under the guise of authority, had perpetrated, since the 



818 A REVIEW OF THE 

commencement of the rebellion, upon the persons and property 
of innocent and unoffending citizens ; against whom no accusa- 
tion could be preferred, save that they believed the abolition war 
policy to be unconstitutional and inimical to the principles of 
reijublics. But fortune, in her grant of imbecility, compensated 
for the grave error that a maddened and intoxicated people, in 
the midst of an appalling revolution, had committed. That 
beneficient goddess either had other duties for the American 
Union, or she wished in future to witness on the Western Con- 
tinent, a chivalric combat of crown worthy heroes ; for had ]^a- 
poleonic will and ambition conjoined themselves v/ith the powers 
of the Federal President, the days of the great occidental repub- 
lic in name, even, would have been chronicled amongst the things 
of the past. The name was retained, however, because fear for- 
bade its abandonment; but governmental consolidation in its 
fullness had been reached. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 319 



CHAPTER XIX. 



DEMOCRATIC ANTI-WAR ATTITUDE. 



Party ties, for a time, after the inauguration of hostilities 
ag-iiiust the South, seemed * to the unreflecting almost to have 
disappeared ; but this was so in appearance, rather than in reality. 
A wave of deceived love for the Union swept over the North, 
and washed into the war current the masses of all political 
organizations, and large numbers of the Democratic leaders were 
also carried by the flood into an antagonism of sentiment to that 
which they and their party, prior to the attack on Fort Sumpter 
had advocated. In this rapid transit, from one school of politi- 
cal opinions to the opposite, we have a fair illustration of the 
manner in which modern pretended leaders are ready to abandon 
their principles and creed, when a storm of popular favor carries 
then' opposing party bark into the port of triumphant victory. 

Jiut all those competent to think for themselves, and whose 
principles harmonized with the opinions that had been uniformly 
entertained by the representative men of the Democratic party, 
notwithstanding the popular clamor, remained attached to their 
sentiments ; but from the necessity of the situation, they were 
either compelled to conceal their thoughts or run the risk of 
political martyrdom. Owing to the large desertion that had 
taken place in their ranks, the Democratic leaders that remained 
true their principles had become too few to be able to rally their 
followers into an opposition to the coercion doctrine of the aboli- 
tion party. The cry for the Union drowned all the patriotic 

* "There is, or has been quite a general impression, backed by constant 
and confident assertions, Uiat the people of the free States were united 
in support of the war, until an Anti-Slavery aspect was given to it by the 
administration. Yet that is very far from the truth. There was no 
moment wherein a large portion of the Northern Democracy were not at 
least passively hostile to any form or shade of ' coercion ; ' wliile many 
openly condemned and stigmatised it as attrocious, unjustifiable aggres- 
sion. And this opposition, when least vociferous, sensibly subtracted 
from the power and diminished the efficiency of the North." — Greeley's 
Cuiillicfc. Vol. 2, p. 513. ^ 



320 A REVIEW OF THE 

expostulation of those who endeavored to prove that a war 
against the South found no warrant in the Federal Constitution, 
or in the principles of an enlightened republican confederac3^ 

It soon seemed as if the war current was irresistible, and the 
large and cautious portion of those who believed the coercion 
policy to be unconstitutional, deemed it prudential to refrain 
from the utterance of their opinions, and thus the flood gates of 
war f urj were permitted to open to their fullest extent, A small 
and resolute band, however, of bold and courageous freemen, 
members of the Democratic party and others antagonistic to 
ultra-abolitionism, declined to surrender all their sense of man- 
hood and independence, and, without any hypocritical conceal- 
ment of their opinions, steadfastly combatted the doctrine of 
coercion as wicked, anti-republican and unconstitutional, and one 
pregnant with future evils for the perpetuity of the free institutions 
of America. That war and bloodshed could unite in fraternal 
concord the two sections of the Union, now become inharmonious 
from a sectionalized antagonism of conflicting principles, appeared 
to this class of citizens as madness in the extreme. This class of 
Democrats was the only one deserving to be recognized as the 
followers of that party, which from the first endorsed the senti- 
ments of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions ; and had such 
doctrines found no supporters even in the darkness of revolution, 
human nature on this occasion would have been convicted of a 
perfidy to principle unheard of in the annals of all anterior 
epochs. 

The disintegration that had nearly penetrated to the core of 
the Democratic party, displayed itself in unmistakable colors 
when the war cry of abolitionism was heard throughout the 
length and breadth of the Kepublic. Men, who up to this 
period, had in words staunchly defended the cardinal principles 
of the old party of Jefferson, which denied to the General Gov- 
ernment any power to compel by arms the j^eople of a State to 
remain in a Union distasteful to them, at once changed their 
position and planted themselves under the banner of the coer- 
cionists. 

And although the American people in appe^.rance had divided 
the Northern against the Southern, a division, however, not of 
sections, obtained as the true one. On the one side were ari'ayed 
all those who. deducing their lineage from Federal and Tory 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 331 

ancestors, favored the employment of the war-power for the en- 
forcement of the national will against the States and their people ; 
and on the other were found those who denied that the General 
Government had ever been clothed by its framers with such 
august authority. The rebels in battle array were marshalled, 
ready to dispute the right of the Government to coerce by arms 
the people of any of the States, and they, like the anti-war party 
of the liorth, based their opinions upon the often endorsed 
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798-9.* Dissemble the 
situation, therefore as we may, truth demands of the impartial 
historian the fair ndmission, that during the war of the rebellion 
but two real parties existed in the nation ; the Southern Confeder- 
ates and the Northern anti-coercion Democrats forming the one of 
these, and the unconcealed Abolitionists, who sincerely strove for 
the emancipation and elevation of the negro race, the other. 

In former chapters, the hypocritical guise assumed by the 
political abolitionists, has been discussed at length ; it now remains 
to be presented the false attitude likewise maintained, for selfish 
ends, by Democratic leaders, during the war ; and to this de- 
ceptions position are due, in a large measure, the vast calamities 
that have been entailed upon the country, from an unholy and 
fiendish crusade of one section of the Union against the other. 
Had the influential Democrats of the Northern States boldly 
faced their political enemies upon the question of Southern sub- 
jugation, and sternly demanded that no men should be taken 
from any of the States for the wicked and unconstitutional pur- 
pose of crushing a kindred people, the demoniacal purpose of the 
fanatical party of Lincoln would have been foiled. Such a 
demand would have paralysed the power of the abolition admin- 
istration, and prevented it from securing recruits for the vilo 
object it was secretly plotting to accomplish, under the pretense 
of defending the Union. But, instead of asserting what justice 
and the principles of the Federal compact demanded, and resisting 

* "From a period as early as 179S, there had existed in all the States a 
party almost uninterruptedly in the majority, based upon the creed that 
each State was in the last resort the sole judge, as well of its wrongs, as 
of the mode and measure of redress. * * * * ipj^g Demo- 
cratic party ot tlie United States rejieated, in its successful canvas of 
1836, the declaration made in numerous previous political contests, that 
it would faithfully abide by and uphold the principles laid down in tlie 
Kentucky and Virginia resolutiuns of 1798 and 1799, and that it adopts 
those principles as constituting one of the Main foundations of its politi- 
cal creed." — Special Message of Jefferson Davis of April 39, 18G1. 



323 A REVIEW OF THE 

the war and its prosecution ; false and treacherous leaders within 
the Democratic organization, pretended that they were in favor 
of defending the national authority by arms, and compelling the 
obedience of the Southern States to the General Government. 
They confined their open opposition to contending that the war 
must be waged npon constitutional principles ; whereas, it was 
clear to the mind of everj^ conscientious and intelligent member 
of the Democratic party, that such a thing as a constitutional 
war against the Southern States was an utter absurdity ; for the 
General Goverument possessed no further power than was con- 
ferred upon it by the Federal Constitution ; and this instrument 
was silent as regarded any such authority. 

The campaigns of 18G1 were contested, seemingly without a 
political difference, both parties in the !North advocating a most 
vigorous prosecution of the war against the South, in order that 
the restoration of the national authority might be effected. In 
some sections, certain Republicans united with the Democrats 
under the name of the Union party, and the resolutions of these 
in conventions, called for vigorous measures against the seceded 
States. The small party that found itself within the Democratic 
organization, was too feeble to make its voice heard in the party 
resolutions of county and State conventions. 

In the resolves of Democratic conventions, the sentiment of 
the party might reasonably be supposed to have been indicated ; 
but it was far from being so at this period. Like by its oppo 
nent, the Republican party, a false attitude was assumed by the 
Democratic party before the country, induced by a fear of popu- 
lar opinion, which unmistakably had committed itself in favor 
of the war for the Union. The Republicans found it necessary 
to disguise the sentiments of all those in their party who sought 
to make the emancipation of slavery the direct object of the war 
against the South ; and the Democrats deemed it also expedient 
for partisan effect to preserve as much as possible from disclosure 
the opinions of their independent men, who resisted from prin- 
ciple the prosecution of the war against the South. Both parties 
w^re thus false to their known creeds and antecedents, as was 
well understood by shrewd discern ers of partisan opinions. From 
the first the political leaders of each party were able to detect 
the real sentiments of their adversaries. The Democrats accused 
the Republicans of designing negro emancipation, as their 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 323 

ultimate aim, whicli the latter stoutly denied ; and on tlie otlier 
hand, the Republicans charged upon their opponents that they 
were in reality opposed to the war, though pretending to favor its 
prosecution ; and this latter accus?ition was likewise vehemently 
denied. These accusations were indeed both well founded, as 
truthful history will be obliged to determine. 

The Democrats of principle were opposed to the war, because 
it was an assumption by the General Government of an authority 
that had never been delegated to it. The States, as they viewed 
matters, having been originally Sovereign Commonwealths by 
their successful revolt against Great Britain, and their recognition 
as such in the family of nations, afterwards agreed to unite for 
commercial and other purposes in a general confederacy, in order 
that they might the better be enabled to defend their independ- 
ence, and advance their happiness amongst the other nations of 
the earth. But the powers delegated by the States were clearly 
defined in the Constitution, and embraced only certain matters 
of a civil nature, which as the framers of the Government be- 
lieved, could be better discharged by Federal than by State 
officials. The General Government, in this manner constituted, 
^vas simply as designed, the representative agent of the States, 
and in no wise clothed with authority to originally dictate to its 
component factors, the States themselves, the independent sove- 
reignties, over all matters of government not clearly enumerated 
in the Federal bond of Union, the Constitution. The framers 
of the Federal Compact had discussed the question of granting tne 
right to the central authority to coerce by force of arms the States, 
but this power they expressly refused to confer. In democratic 
eyes, therefore, what else could the war be, but an unwarranted 
exercise of unconstitutional authority. 

Another reason that induced Democratic opposition to a war 
of subjugation, arose from the belief that all efforts of that kind, 
instead of cementing the antagonistic portions of the country, 
would simply widen the breach that had for years been forming 
between the people of the North and those of the South ; and 
render a permanent Union of the two sections upon republican 
]M"iiiciples impossible. The history of the rise and fall of repub- 
lics, and the philosophy of human nature, were sufficient to 
satisfy reflecting Democrats that the preservation of Govern- 
ments, such as the American Union, 'must ever rest upon the 



324 A REVIEW OF THE 

free and unconstrained consent of the controlling minds of every 
community. This consent can alone be retained by that govern- 
ment which metes out equal and exact justice, according to the 
letter and spirit of its institutions, to all its component sections 
and their citizens. The Democratic party had ever done so whilst 
the reins of power were in their hands ; and no serious revolt of 
any State ever raised its head during their administration of pub- 
lic affairs ; and when dissatisfaction upon any occasion manifested 
itself, wisdom dictated to their representatives to remove the 
same, and this having taken place, peace instantly returned. 

Again, the Democratic party could not approve of the war 
begun against the South, under the pretence of restoring the 
Union, when fully satisfied that other reasons formed the motives 
for its inauguration. Had they not read the declarations of 
Seward, Giddings, Burlingame, and other leaders, w^hose words 
clearly proved that negro emancipation, and that alone, was the 
secret that urged the Abolitionists to take up the cause of that 
same Union, which before this period had in their eyes been con- 
temptible? If, argued the Democrats, the preservation of the 
Federal Union alone, influenced the Kepublican party in its 
movements, why did its representative men refuse all tern:s of 
compromise when offered by Southern statesmen ; and at a time 
when this, as was admitted upon all sides, would have rescued 
the country from the bloody chasm into which abolition obsti- 
nancy and fanaticism were driving.it ? The party of reason and 
reflection could not be ignorant of all these facts ; and when the 
war was made and prosecuted in violation -of rectitude and a true 
and enlightened policy, was their approbation of the govern- 
mental iniquity to be expected ? l^ot unless error and madness 
were to be canonized as truth. And would even true philan- 
thropic motives have called for the emancipation of the Southern 
bondmen, the demand, nevertheless, would have forbidden war 
and bloodshed for the accomplishment of their freedom. For as 
Caucasian serfdom had perished in the different coun'tries of 
Europe, before the advancement of a reiiiiing and Christian 
intelligence, without any revolutionary uprising ; so also should 
the same influence, penetrating the Southern States themselves, 
have been permitted to remove African slavery without any 
obtrusive Northern intermeddling. Was then the Democratic 
party required to give its support to a war commenced in viola- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AlIERICA. 325 

tion of all tlie principles of modern civilization ? If it was not, 
what else, to be obedient to conscience, could sincere and intelli- 
gent members of the party of Jeiferson in the North do, except 
to oppose to the utmost of their ability, the abolition war, as 
unconstitutional, unchristian, and altogether anti-republican in 
its aims and tendencies ? 

As the war against the South progressed, one occurrence after 
another revealed more clearly the changing programme of the 
administration party. The legislation of the first regular session 
of the Thirty-seventh Congress, disclosed to the eyes of thinking 
men that the overthrow of negro slavery, under the pretence of 
devotion to the Union, was fully resolved upon, by Republican 
leaders assembled at Washington and throughout the North. 
And as abolition approval became enthusiastic in its endorse- 
ment of the war and its changing schedule, so in like ratio did 
the Democratic party unite in a more solid phalanx of opposition 
to the anticipated designs of abolitionism. 

In the different States of the North, an organized opposition 
in the Democratic party to the war, began first to display itself 
with intensity in tho political campaigns of 1862 ; and yet no 
important convention of that party fully committed itseK to an 
open denunciation of the war for the Union. The politicians 
, who are ever upon the lookout for political ascendancy rather 
than for the success of principle, held in check those Democrats 
who would have had the party in its conventions to declare 
openly against the war, and baave to the utmost abolition malig- 
nity. An avowal by the Democratic party of its open repudia- 
tion of the war of invasion against the South, would have 
yeleased it from its hypocritical attitute, and placed it in a posi- 
I tion where its blows would have been more felt by its adversaiy. 
But in the base and ignoble condition in whicn it was placed by 
false leaders, men of honor and courage were unable to grapple 
successfully with their political opponents. How could men, 
thoroughly imbued with the belief that the war was unconstitu- 
tional, give a hearty support to candidates nominated upon a 
platform which called for the restoration of the Union by blood- 
shed, and for vigorous hostilities against the seceded States ? 
They only did so as a choice of evils, convinced at the same time 
that the spirit of the Democratic party was repugnant to all 
coercive measures ; and although the latter had been endorsed in 



336 A REVIEW OF THE 

tlieir conventions, yet they felt that a cowardly policy alone Lad 
been instrumental in inducing their leaders to approve of such 
undemocratic principles. 

The Democratic party went into the several State canvases, 
animated by hostility to the war, and thorouglily imbued with the 
conviction that the theory of the administration for the restora- 
tion of a Confederated Union was baseless and chimerical. The 
contest already having proved one of longer continuance than 
popular expectation had anticipated, was calculated to induce 
most of those who had originally favored compromise to support 
the principles and candidates of the Democratic party. A strong 
Northern tide of antipathy to the movements of abolition- 
ism, had indeed been rising since the meeting of Congress, in 
December, 1861 ; and which continued to flow the more rapidly 
as the curtain of disguise continued from time to time to be 
lifted. The Presidential proclamation of September 22d, 1862, 
might seem to have produced a crisis of popular revulsion against 
the abolition policy, which showed itself in the anti-administra- 
tion victories of the autumn of that same year. 

The victories of this year, in the ISTorthern States, recuperated 
somewhat the prostrate Democracy, and inflicted a slight blow 
upon the Republican administration, which was fruitful of bene- 
flt. Horatio Seymour, of New York, and Joel Parker, of New 
Jersey, were elected Governors of their respective States by con- 
siderable majorities. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, 
were carried by the Democrats by small majorities on their State 
tickets. All these States sent heavier Democratic delegations to 
the Lower Plouse of National Pepresentatives, than were found 
in the Thirty-seventh Congress. Michigan, Wisconsin, and m.ost 
other "Western States, showed a decided falling off in administra- 
tion strength. 

It was natural that the result of the elections of 1862, should 
infuse a buoyancy of spirit into the breasts of tlie Northern 
Democracy ; and many of them, forgetful of the platforms upon 
which tlieir victory had been won, credited the growing anti-war 
sentiment of the people of their different States as the chief 
cause of their success. No doubt this sentiment was largely in- 
strumental in keeping up the compact organization of the party ; 
but the time had elapsed when the subjugationists, with vast 
armies in the field and the whole machinery of the National 



POLITICAL CONFLICTIN AMERICA. 837 

Government at their command, could successfully be resisted. 
But the Peace Democrats of the Western States and elsewhere, 
emboldened, nevertheless, by the late successes, believed that the 
party could now be brought into an attitude of open resistance 
to the war ; and, impressed with this conviction, they deemed it 
their duty to make the effort. 

Besides, the Thirty-seventh Congress would have seemed to 
an indifferent spectator as if desirous of adding additional incen- 
tives to the Peace party, to resist the war of subjugation. For 
if ever a people should rebel against an ungodly and wicked fac- 
tion having control of a Government, then the I^orthern people 
would have been fully justified in doing so at this period. 
But, notwithstanding the odious and unconstitutional legislation 
of this Congress, the people were found to be as slaves, utterly 
incapable of resisting the tyrannous despots, and the old party 
of law and order was still compelled to muzzle its utterances 
and stigmatize those resisting with arms the national tyranny, as 
traitors and assassins of liberty. 

The anti-coercion sentiments of Benjamin Wood, one of the 
outs]Doken and independent peace Congressmen of the the North, 
which will ever reflect increasing lustre and glory upon his name 
throughout distant ages, are here given at considerable length ; 
and this because they are typical of the views of those who from 
the first opposed the inauguaration of hostilities, and who ever 
afterwards continued to advocate a cessation of arms in order 
that reason might be left free to restore what fanaticism had dis- 
rupted. Mr. Wood, in his speech of February 27th, 1863, said : 

" We can never by force of arms control the will of a peo- 
ple, our equals in the attributes of enlightened manhood ; and 
while the will of that people remains adverse to political com- 
panionship with us, political companionship is impossible. Blood- 
shed, destruction of property and occupation of lands are possi- 
ble ; much suffering, grief and folly are possible ; we have too 
eadly proved it ; but a constrained union of Sovereign States is 
an impossibility, which if omnipotence could accomplish, omnis- 
cience would not attempt. 

" I feel that upon the fresh, pure soil of the N'ew World, we 
have thrown the seeds of discord, and they will take root. But 



328 A EEVIEW OF THE 

■while my experience asd the testimony of our fathers through 
eighty-seven years of prosperity and progress, have well estab- 
lished my faith in the benehcence of a union of the States, I 
cannot understand that its blessings are of a natm*e to be enjoyed 
upon compulsion. 

" But granting it possible, the question arises of equal moment, 
is it desirable ? Has not the struggle already been too fierce to 
admit of unity and cordial feeling between a conquering and a 
conquered section ? Sir, I fear it has ; I believe that while the 
memory of this war exists, the people of the North and South, 
imited by constraint, would not sufficiently forgive the past years' 
record to admit of kindly relationship in the same politcal house- 
hold. Right or wrong, men will cling to their own impressions 
of a great and sanguinary struggle, in which they or their sires 
have been participants. As the living fathers of future genera- 
tions this day feel, so will they bequeath to their children, and in 
natural course, the IS'orth and South will nurse their own seperate 
views of this unparalleled epoch of carnage and contention." 

" "Will the text book of historj^, conned by the boys of Massa- 
chusetts, serve hereafter in the school rooms of the Carolinas i 
Will the stories of Manassas, of Shiloh, of Antietam, of Freder- 
icksburg, and of a hundred other battle fields, be told in the 
same spirit, Northward and Southward from the banks of the 
Potomac? Will the winter tales be similar when the youth of 
either section gather about the hearthstone, and feel the young 
blood tingle in their veins at the words of white haired heroes ? 
Will the matrons of Louisiana train their offspring to venerate 
the name of Butler ? Will the remembrances of Davis, Lee and 
Johnston be identical in New England and Yirginia ? No, sir, 
unless mutual consent should re-unite us, the pages of history 
and the words of tradition will breathe of the sympathies that 
now exist ; and the generations to come will as surely be educated 
to distinct and opposite prejudices. The school-room, the pulpit 
and the press, would then, as now, inculcate doctrines that cannot 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 329 

assimilate ; and in this Capitol, the representatives of the people 
would be the representatives of sectional antipathies. Sir, to 
avoid this, we must avoid inflicting the sting of submission, or 
engendering the pride of conquest. 

" Our fathers gave us a Union founded on mutual consent, 
concession, and reciprocal attachment ; we would entail upon our 
children, a political connection based upon hatred, suspicion, and 
opposing prejudices. A Nationality thus constituted, would be 
a mockery of i^epublicanism and its bane; a political prostitu- 
tion ; the joining of hands before an altar whose divinity could 
attest the heart's irrepressible loathing and disgust. Had I the 
faculty to crush with one blow the material power of the South, 
I would not strike. My pride as an American would revolt at 
the thought of dragging them reluctant, hopeless, and spirit- 
broken into a fellowship that they abhor. Union restored by 
subjugation would be but the prelude to increasing altercation. 
It is not enough to affirm that I would not enforce the unnatural 
connection ; sir, I would not consent to it. I would oppose it as 
a degredation to ourselves, an insult to our institutions, and a 
violation of the priciples of self-government. I would oppose 
it as an impediment to our national progress ; as a perpetuation 
of discord and contention between States, and as involving either 
its own future dissolution, or the assumption by the General 
Government of military and despotic functions, fatal to republi- 
canism. I confess, sir, that I apprehend no difficulties or mis- 
fortunes in the event of a separation at all commensurate with 
those that must inevitably prove the sequences of reunion by 
mere force of arms. 

" I cannot conceive a happy, prosperous and republican Union, 
cemented by blood, remolded in repugnance, and prolonged by 
the submission of the weak to the dictation of the strong, 

"A partnership in our Confederacy should be granted as a 
boon, and only to those that seek it ; not enforced as an obliga- 
tion upon those that ask it not. It should be held a privilege to 



330 A REVIEW OF THE 

Le proud of, not an imposition to shrink from and protest against. 
Were I certain tliat, in a military sense, tliis war would prove 
Buecessf ul, nevertheless I would oppose it ; for with the destruction 
of the resisting power of the South, would vanish every hope of 
their existence as equal and contented members of one household. 

" In my view this war, nominally for the Union, has actually 
been waged against it. 

" But upon what foundation was the structure (of the Union) 
built ? Sir, upon the free will of the people, l^ot of one 
State, or of one section, but of all the States and of all the 
sections. While that free will existed, the temple was of a 
nature to withstand the ravages of time. That free will has 
ceased to exist, and the temple has crumbled into dust. It is no 
more. It is a glory of the past. What you conceive to be the 
structure is but a memory, so intense that it seems reality ; but 
the substance is not there. Rebuild it if you can ; but you must 
first obtain the free will of the South which your armies and 
navies cannot secure. 

" I have never voted a dollar for the war. As a legislator, as 
a citizen, and as a man, I claim to be absolved from all participa- 
tion in this murderous strife. With all my humble abilities I 
have endeavored to arrest it. I shall still endeavor, and if in 
vain, let my efforts attest before God and man, that I am un- 
stained with the blood of my countrymen. 

"Sir, you may have observed that I have spoken without 
regard to the views of other men or the doctrines of political 
organizations. If I stand alone, my isolation conjures up no 
phantoms of doubt or fear. While my country groans beneath 
the stroke of her own dagger, I forswear all allegiance to party 
Whatever proposition in my mind shall enhance the prospect of 
peace shall have my vote. Peace is the goal of my political 
course — the haven of my hopes. I care not by whose chart I 
steer, or whose hand shall guide the helm, so that the compass 
shall guide thitherward. Whosoever shall raise its standards, 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AJIEMCA. S31 

shall iind me readj to serve beneath its folds. Whosoever shall 
blazon the olive branch for his devise, shall have me his adherent. 
In whatever shape the demon of destruction shall appear, I will 
oppose him. In whatever garb the spirit of peace shall clothe 
her radiant form, I will embrace her. Conciliation, compro- 
mise or seperation, each shall be acceptable to me, if as its conse- 
quence, we shall be spared the scourge of war. Let the most 
zealous emancipationist suggest a cessation of hostilities, and I am 
with him. Let the staun chest member of the opposition uphold 
the war, and I am against him. I have no sympathies with those 
who denounce the Administration, and yet call for vigorous 
hostilities. In my view, the Abolitionist is a more honest politi- 
cian and a more conscientious citizen. He is a fanatic — not a 
mere time server ; wrong, but consistent in his wrong ; the wor- 
6hipj)er of a false God, but earnest in his adoration. Would 
that all who denounce him, were as sincere and as bold in the 
expression of their opinions." * 

During February and March, 1863, the Peace Democracy 
began to assume a bolder position than they had as yet done; 
and the slurring epithet of Cojyperheadsy from this period, was 
currently apj^lied to them by their political enemies. Meetings 
of the Peace men were held in different sections of the country ; 
and a large one in Mozart Hall, Kew York, was addressed by 
Fernando Wood and others of similar sentiments. Resolutions 
strongly denunciatory of the war were adopted by the Mozart 
Democracy. 

The Democratic party of Connecticut, in the spring of 1863 
placed in nomination for Governor, Col. Thomas H. Seymour, 
an early, consistent and outspoken opponent of the Abolition 
war; and the Convention which nominated him, adopted the 
following resolution : 

''Resolved, That while we denounce the heresy of secession, as unde- 
fended and unwarranted by the Constitution, we as confidently assert, 
that whatever may heretofore have been the -opinion of our countrymen, 
the time has now arrived when all true lovers of the Constitution are 
ready to abandon the ''monstrous fallacy" that the Union can be restored 



♦Appendix to Con. Globe, 3d Session of 37th Congress, Part 2, pp. 134-5. 



S33 A REVIEW OF THE 

by the armed hand alone ; and we are anxious to inaugurate such action, 
honorable alike to the contending sections, as will stop the ravages of 
war, avert universal bankruptcy, and unite all the States upon terms of 
equality as members of one Confederacy.'' 

Tlie war party now became more bitterly denmiciatory of tlieir 

political antagonists, than before, accusing them of a desire either 

to establish slavery throughout the North, or to disrupt the Union 

in the interest of the rebellion. It soon became evident that 

such abuse and vilification would be able to detract timid men 

from the support of the Peace party ; and neutralize tlieir 

strength by detaining them from the polls, or attract them to the 

support of those boasting themselves the Union party of the Nation. 

That the Peace Democracy would not be able successfully to 

contest with the party that already had seized the National purse 

and sword, become evident in the Connecticut campaign. Thomas 

n. Seymour was defeated and the peace movement crippled. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. S33 



CHAPTER XX, 

THE NEW EBA. 

A new era of American affairs began with the 1st of January, 
1863 ; this being the date of the emancipation edict, which pro- 
claimed freedom to tlie negro slaves of the South. In thia 
famous proclamation, President Lincoln boldly avowed the false- 
hood of his own former assurances of his constitutional inability 
and also his disinclination to interfere with the institutions of the 
seceded States* ; and without any further disguise he declared 
that the future policy of the Government should embrace not 
alone the non-extension, but the entire removal of African Sla- 
very. In more senses than one, therefore, did this constitute 
the commencement of a new era. It was impossible but that 
this proclamation emenating from the Chief Magistrate of the 
Nation, and clearly disproving his own former utterances and that 
of his party, should sanctify perfidy and breach of faith ; and 
tend to enoble every form of treachery and corruption of which 
mankind are capable. ' 

*' ' Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, 
that by the accessi«m of a Republican administration, their property and 
their peace and personal security are ta be endangered. Tiiere has 
never been any reasonable cause for such apprehensions. Indeed, the 
most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been 
open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the public speeches of 
him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches 
wlien I declare that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere 
with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I 
have no lawful right to do so, a nd I have no inclination to do so. Those 
who maintained and elected me did so, with full knowledge that I had 
made this and similar declarations, and had never recanted them. 
And more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and 
as a 'aw to themselves and to me the clear and emphatic resolution which 
I now read. 

^'Resolved, That the maintenace inviolate of the rights of the States, 
and especially the right of each State, to order and control its own do- 
mestic institutions, according to its own judgment exclusively, is essen- 
tial to the balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of 
our political fabric depend ; and we denounce the lawless invasion by 
armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what 
pretext, as among the grossest crimes." — Lincoln's Inaugural of Llarch 4, 
1861. 



S34 A REVIEW OF THE 

The new era being tlius inaugurated in the promulgation of 
the final emancipation proclamation, the 37th Congress by the 
time of its termination, had so welded the chains of despotism, 
as to render the revolution complete and irreversible. The prin- 
ciples of the radical revolutionists, Sumner, Stevens, Lovejoy and 
others, which at first were seemingly repudiated utterly in Con- 
gress, now came forward and found party recognition, being sus- 
tained by a pretended popular opinion in the Northern States. 
The new era was especially significant in this, that legislation 
came to be molded by what showed itself, from a despotic sup- 
pression of opposing oj)inion, as the will of the majority. 

The revolutionary leaders were sagacious and far seeing, and 
from an early period of the war, little doubt, even prior to its 
commencement, had planned the entire future policy of their 
part}^, which was to remodel the whole social sj'stem of the South 
as also of the North, should the might of numbers finally tri- 
umph over the defenders of the Constitution, and the principles 
of free government. Did not Charles Sumner offer his famous 
resolutions in the United States Senate, which declared the for- 
feiture of statehood by all the seceded members of the South- 
ern Confederacy ? and did he not do so at so early a day that his 
senatorial friends deemed it impolitic that they should commit 
the Republican party to their endorsement ? Did not the radical 
Congressmen, from the first, oppose the admission of Kepresenta- 
tives from the reclaimed sections of the South, out of fear for 
their favored State-suicide doctrine, which would territorialize the 
revolted States, and place them fully beneath the heel of their 
despotic power ? Did Thaddeus Stevens, Bingham, of Ohio, 
Eliot, of Massachusetts, and certain other radicals in the House, 
vote for the admission of Flanders and Halm as Rej)resentatives 
from the First and Second Districts of Louisiana, after the cap- 
ture of the Crescent City by the Union army ? Henry L. Dawes, 
himself a Republican, in his speech of February 17, 1863, showed 
the motive for the opposition to the admission of the Louisiana 
Representatives. He said : 

'* My own colleague (Mr. Eliot) has another remedy. These States, 
according to liim, have destroyed themselves, and can re-enter the Union 
through the preparatory stage of Territorial Governments." 

Again, the new era gave fresh impetus to the movement 
iilready begun of enrolling colored soldiei"s into the Northern 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 835 

armies. A few enthusiastic Union Generals had in the latter 
part of 1862, done everything in their power to impel the 
Washington authorities to determine to accept slaves and free 
negroes into the military service of the country ; but President 
Lincoln and his advisers did not yet deem it prudent to take so 
important a step, until its entire safety in Northern public opinion 
might be premised. Fugitive slaves, had however, been accepted 
by several of these federal commanders, and at the same time 
with the knowledge of the Washington Administration. No 
express warrant to do so had as yet been given, and nevertheless 
negro regiments were recruited and daily drilled without ai^y 
fear of rebuke from Abraham Lincoln or his Cabinet. Thesra 
officers, however, well understood the spirit and tone of the 
Administration, and lience had no dread of any reprimands that 
might be inflicted, for they were fully assured that none such 
would be given by the President, unless in deference to opinions 
which he himself by no means cherished. 

The revolutionary abolitionists had for some time been advo- 
cating the enrollment of negroes into the Union armies, and 
mainly in behalf of the future political equalization which they 
intended to advocate, should the overthrow of the rebellion be 
effected. With the new era, therefore, negro enrollment may be 
said to date its open approval by the National Administration. 
The President, in his Emancipation Proclamation, declared in 
language still somewhat guarded, that negroes should henceforth 
form a part of the military forces of the nation. He said : 

" And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable 
c-ondition will be received into the armed service of the United States to 
garrison forts, positions, stations and other places, and to man vessels of 
all sorts in said service. 

The Abolitionists now conceived their victory as almost com- 
plete, since they, at length, had succeeded in having the Execu- 
tive to declare before the nation that negro soldiers might be 
taken into the federal service. And, notwithstanding, in the 
cautious language which the President had made use of, he had 
scarcely committed himself beyond what was already granted in 
the Act of Congress of July 17, 1862. This Act had authorized 
the employment of negroes in constructing intrenchments, and 
in performing camp and other naval and military service, for 
which they might be found competent. Full equality in the 



2m A EEVIEW OF THE 

military service, however, was not therein conceded, and Abraham 
Lincoln, though designing this equality, guarded liis language so 
carefully, as that he should not appear before the country to be 
extendino- what in reality he meant to grant. His intentions, 
nevertheless, were fully understood by those of his friends and 
enemies, who were not deceived by words alone. But his ambig- 
uous expressions admirably served the purpose of his political 
partisans, who were thus enabled to interpret them as exigencies 
might require. 

The enrolling of negroes into the Union armies, ^-\•hich was so 
discouraged by the administration during the first and second 
years of the war, soon came now to be everywhere allowed. It 
was in accordance with what might readily have been surmised, 
that Massachusetts, the home of revolutionary republicanism, 
should be found- to be the first place in the North to open its 
doors for negro recruiting. And the earliest upon record that 
invoked the privilege of doing so, was Governor Andrew, the 
prophetic Executive of the Bay State, who foresaw the streets 
and highways of his own Commonwealth crowded with soldiers, 
rushing to the battle's front, when the Presidential bugle of free- 
dom should sound its blast throughout the land. This highly 
coveted privilege was accorded to the enthusiastic Chief Magis- 
trate of the Old State of the Pilgrims, by Edward M. Stanton, 
Secretary of War, on the 20th of January, 1863. 

And lest his characteristic timidity should deter Abraham 
Lincoln from allowing negro recruiting to be prosecuted with 
sufficient zeal in all sections of the Union, Thaddeus Stevens 
deemed it his duty to exert his utmost efforts to strengthen the 
Presidential nerves. It was the policy that Mr. Stevens had 
long desired to see inaugurated ; and one which his fellow-mem- 
bers in Congress credited him as being the first to advocate upon 
the floor, of the House. Long delay interposed, though Tt^it and 
scorn gave frequent admonition of Presidential duty ; but finally 
hesitation relaxed its hold. The decree had gone forth. And 
now others, perchance, might carry off the glory in equalizing 
the human races, should the leader of the House not conspicu- 
ously show himself the ardent champion of that movement 
which he had labored so faithfully to inaugurate. 

His amendment of the 27tli of January, to the bill before 
the House, to raise additional troops for the service of the Gov- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. C37 

crnment, placed Mr. Stevens in full accord with the new era ; 
and none need seek, after that exhibition of desire for negro 
equality, to snatch from Yermont's son the laurels he had so 
fairly won. From this period the name of commoner was fitly 
applied to the Lancaster statesman. But as the great orator of 
Kentucky, Henry Clay, also bore the same appellation, for dis- 
tinction's sake in history, it will be well to entitle the younger 
statesman the negro commoner. 

But this effort of Mr. Stevens, to raise negro soldiers, though 
it received the ajiprobaticn of the Lower House of Congress, 
already quite obedient to his dictation, was deemed altogether 
needless, in the estimation of sagacious Senators. This highly 
learned body were unable to see any necessity for legislation, 
additional to what had been enacted in the preceding July. 
Senators contended that ample power had already been conferred 
upon the President to enable him to recruit negroes for anj'- de- 
partment of the land or naval service for which he might con- 
cider them competent. It might have been thonght matter of 
surprise that these two loyal bodies should differ so widely as to 
the powers granted to the President, in regard to the enrollment 
of the negroes into the Union armies. Had no fears, however, 
been entertained as to the consequences of adopting the policy 
of the new era, it is apprehended that much greater harmony of 
sentiment would have prevailed between the Senate and House 
of Bepresentatives. A clearly avowed negro equalizing and 
enlistment j^olicy was yet dreaded by leading Republicans. Ac- 
cordingly, the Thirty-seventh Congi'ess adjourned, having its 
role of despotism finished and complete, but leaving as the mis- 
sion of the new era to accomplish what reason discouraged, vis : 
io equalize as soldiers and citizens the jpeoj)le of every race and 
clime. 

In view of the popular antipathy to the enrollment of African 
soldiers into the army, by far the most prudential method for the 
Government to pursue, was to permit the TVar Department to 
accord the privilege of raising colored troops, and thus elude 
public scrutiny to better advantage. Indeed, the wide spread 
contempt and hatred of the colored race, was turned to practical 
account by the philantrophic reformers, who argued that these 
despised men should be taken into the public service, in order 
to spare the lives of free white men of the Korth. The white 



333 A REVIEW OF THE 

soldiers of tlie Kortli became at once very dear to the enthusiastic 
negro equahzers, when an object gratifying to their malicious 
souls was to be served. It had not before occurred to them that 
the lives of the poor white men should have been considered, at 
a time when the war could have been averted by a slight con- 
cession of principle to confederate allies, whose conscience and 
judgment Avere equally deserving of regard as their own. But 
they were the infallible conscience guides of the races, and the 
least swerving froni the pre-arranged programme might have 
been fatal to their darling hopes of sable elevation. 

The new era, with its despotic phases and Africanizing evolu- 
tions, v\'as now fully installed. The qualm of loathing that had 
been rising for some time in democratic sentiment, was sufficient 
almost to produce a counter rebellion in the I^ortli to resist 
equally, what the Southern Confederates were battling. But 
much as any rebellion would have been justified, under the cir- 
cumstances, in resisting the most consummate traitors and des- 
pots that had ever disgraced the principles of free government ; 
a successful one was utterly impossibe at a time when all the 
governmental machinery was in the hands of the enemies of the 
Confederacy of the fathers, and. when vast armies of the youth- 
ful men of the country were under arms, enlisted in the belief 
that they were called into to the service of their country to de- 
fend the Union and the Constitution ; whereas, every stroke they 
inflicted was a stab at that Constitution they adored, and the civil 
liberty of their countrymen. 

It was the principle of rule or ruin that spurred onwards the 
revolutionary men (though a minority of the American peo- 
ple) who had, under the guise of law, snatched control of the 
reins of Government ; and which they determined either to 
remodel to suit their wild and delusive ideas of right, or to per- 
ish in the struggle. And so has it ever been in the world's his- 
tory ; and the Western revolutionists difl:ei*ed little from their 
elder brethren across the waters. Thaddeus Stevens, Charles 
Sumner and Horace Greeley varied but triflingly in spirit and 
sympathy from Robespierre, Danton and Marat, the men who 
were willing to subvert church and State, constitutional and 
social order, and overwhelm in one universal vortex of ruin 
everything that interposed obstacles to their mad designs and 
ambition. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 339 

The negro enrolling of the new era, was prosecuted with steady 
continuity in face of all the protests of the people of the Bor- 
der, and the Democrats of the Northern States, Soldiers of 
African descent henceforth were enlisted into the service through- 
out the North, and likewise in those parts of the South which 
had been rescued from the control of the Confederates. Fugitive 
slaves were all the time making their way into the Union lines, 
and being speedily metamorphosed into regiments and corjjs 
cP Afrique^ were steadily drilled by white officers. By the 22d 
of May, 1863, a special Bureau of colored troops was found nec- 
essary to be organized in the War Department for the manage- 
ment of this branch of the Federal army. President Lincohi, 
in his Message of the 8th of December, following, was able to 
speak of the colored recruits as follows : 

"Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the rebellion, full one 
hundred thousand are now in the United States military service, about 
one-half of which number actually bear arms in the ranks." 

The new era, again, was not alone revolutionary in the move- 
ments originated by the radicals for placing the negro in the 
Union armies, in order to pave the way for his future political 
equalization. It was the product of and j^regnant with revolution. 
The old stable land marks of law and order must be removed to 
further the views of men who regarded neither the will nor 
interests of the people, further than they could make the same 
subserve their own purposes. Had public interests influenced 
them, would not their conduct from the first have been different ? 
Should not the opinions and sentiments of the Southern people, 
being a part of the United States, have been consulted as to their 
demands and the conditions upon which they would have been 
willing to remain in the Union? Did not justice and reason so 
dictate? Did not the Northern Democratic party, in its con- 
ciliatory policy, demand this consideration in behalf of the rights 
of the Southern people ? Y/'ere not the united South and the 
Democrats of the North a great majority of the citizens of the 
Union ? It follows, then, as a sequence, that the Abolitionists,""' a 
vast minority of the American people, despising the constitu- 

"*The word Abolitionists will be seen to have been employed at time ! 
to designate the Republican party, for the reason tliat thougli a'l Repub- 
licans were not Abolitionists, yet ail Abolitionists were Re.-ubliciins. 
And besides, it is difficult from the period of the Emancipat on Procla- 
mation, to conceive how any save Abolitionists could act with the 
Republican party. 



340 A REVIEW OF THE 

tioual guarantees of tJieir Southern brethren, drove the hitter into 
vebelhon in defence of their inherited rights. 

Permission for the soldiers to vote in the army was one of the 
instrumentalities seized upon by the revolutionists as an admirable 
means for the perpetuation of their power. And as a phase of 
the movements of 'the new era, it deserves to be considered. 
The defeat of the Republicans in the Autumn of 1862 in the 
INorth by the Democratic party, came upon them as a clap of 
thunder from a clear sky, and they were puzzled to devise plausi- 
ble excuses for the disaster they had sustained. Their shrewd 
leaders fully comprehended the reasons that influenced the popu- 
lar verdict that had been pronounced against them. But born of 
dissimulation, it was not to be expected that they would admit 
the real causes which they were aware had contributed to the 
result. The main excuse urged by them was, that it was owing 
to the absence of such vast numbers of their voters in the army, 
that the elections had I'esulted in their overthrow. It was a 
plausible pretence that crafty leaders could employ to good ad- 
vantage ; for it was reasonable to suppose that all who had 
enlisted in the Federal armies would be favorable to the prosecu- 
tion of the war for the restoration of the Union. And, there- 
fore, the presumption seemed probable that the majority of the 
enrolled men in the diiferent Union armies could be relied upon 
to sustain by their votes the war in which these same soldiers 
were enlisted. 

Immediately after the Republican reverses of 18G2, move- 
ments were set on foot to amend the law, so as to secure the 
political aid of the soldiers in the field, in order that all future 
efforts of the Democracy to snatch power from Abolition hands 
might be thwarted. A purely deceptions method was instituted 
to change the law as it stood, in favor of soldier suffrage. Most 
of the Constitutions of the IN^orthern States contained provisions 
adverse to the right of any indivividual voting, except he was 
prepared to tender his ballot in the district or the precinct where 
he resided. Well matured reasons had induced the framers of 
the different State Constitutions to demand of every voter that 
he be a i-esident citizen in that place where he offers to vote. A 
voting army has never been deemed a safe phenomenon by pure 
patriots who had no interests to subserve, save those of civil 
liberty and free representative government. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 341 

The method adopted by the Eepiiblican leaders, was simply to 
obtain the passage of a law by the Legislatures of the different 
States, permitting their soldiers in the army to vote ; and that 
this result should be remitted and computed with the home vote. 
Laws to this effect were passed by the Legislatures of Pennsyl- 
vania, Connecticut, Iowa, and other States, which were de- 
clared unconstitutional. A bill also passed both Houses of the 
New York Legislature, which was promptly vetoed by Governor 
Seymour. It seemed madness to enact laws clearly in violation 
of the fundamental charter of a State, but an object was to be 
gained in so doing. The Democrats, as consistent men and as 
friends of their State Constitutions, could not support a measure 
in plain violation of these instruments. The opposition of Horatio 
Seymour, of New York, George "VV. Woodward, of the Supreme 
Court of Pennsylvania, and of other constitutional men in the 
different States, was made use of as an electioneering argument 
to induce the soldiers and their friends to believe that the Demo- 
crats of the North were disinclined to granting them the right 
of suffrage. 

The Democrats did not meet the demand for soldier voting 
with that prompt opposition which duty required ; but they 
temporized by showing their readiness to acquiesce in the change 
sought for, by supporting, in 1863, in the New York Legislature, 
Judge Dean's Bill for an amendment to the Constitution, pro- 
viding for soldier suffrage. Instead of the evasive resistance to 
Avliat they must have felt to be a violation of fundamental prin- 
ciple , an open and manly resentment of the political wrong 
contemplated, would have obtained strong support, even amongst 
intelligent soldiers themselves. But in none of the S<tates was 
united party opposition made by the Democrats to the voting of 
the soldiers in the army, when it once came to be a question of 
amending the Constitution for that purpose. There can, how- 
ever, be but little doubt, that from the time when the question 
of voting in the army was iirst mooted, it was viewed by all 
Bound constitutional Democrats with dislike, because based upon 
unsound principles ; but ihety saw the disadvantage under which 
they would be placed in attempting to combat it. But the Re- 
publican party, under the captivating pretence of equality, con- 
tinued zealously to press the right of all citizens to vote, even 
when in the service of their country ; and by 1864, fourteen 



3i3 A REVIEW OF THE 

States had authorized tlieir soldiers in the field to deposit their 
ballots in all elections of the people. 

But, until the State Constitutions could be changed, the Kepub- 
lican party was necessitated to resort to the desperate expedient 
of sending home from the armies, as many of their partisans as 
were necessary to turn in their favor the election in any State in 
which a canvass was pending. This was done in the New 
Hampshire and Connecticut elections in the Spring of 1863, 
before alluded to; and in the succeeding elections in other 
States, steadily repeated. Indeed, the army from this period 
was jnanipulated into an engine of omnipotent power in the 
hands of unscrupulous partisans, who were willing to do any thing 
to perpetuate their hold of the machinery of Government. The 
most daring and high handed excesses and violations of all moral 
principle were resorted to by bold and bad men, instigated without 
doubt, by the highest officials, to counteract the will of the peoj^le 
through the instrumentality of the ballot. It was an easy matter 
for the officers of the army, the great majority of whom were 
favorites of the Administration, to send home to any election the 
Kepublican soldiers, and such others as were known to be in 
sympathy with the professed objects of the war party. Those 
known to be of contrary opinions, could easily be detained upon 
a thousand frivolous excuses, the enumeration of wliich would 
till a volume. No excuse might be able to detain from his home 
on election day, a bold and intelligent Democrat like Lieutenant 
Edgerley, of New Hampshire, who knew that thousands of Re- 
publican soldiers had been sent to their States to vote ; but, it 
was easy to cashier one of such independence, (as was done in 
this case*) for distributing Democratic ballots at his own home. 

It was easy for Louis Napoleon, by means of his beautiful 
snare of universal suffrage, to carry away the liberty of his native 
France ; and so in like manner it was no difficult task for the 
Republican party, by aid of the soldiers, from whom all informa- 
tion was excluded, to turn any election in their favor that they 
desired. The despotism required for the purpose was of course 
equally as perfect as that which enabled the French aspirant 
across the waters to seize the reins of absolute power. "When 
no newspapers were allowed to circulate in the army, except such 
as the President and his officers were pleased to allow, and when 

«.>few York Herald of April 37, 18G3. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 813 

soldiers were not permitted to discuss public questions and freely 
canvass the acts of the Administration, what else could be expected 
than that the great majority of them would vote in favor of that 
same Administration ? 

The very constitution of an army makes it an available engine 
in the hands of that Administration by which it is directed, and 
hence arises the danger of allowing the right of suffrage to be 
exercised by its soldiers. The officers of the army are dependent 
upon the Administration and its agents, for their original posi- 
tions, for assignments to duty suitable to their wishes, for leaves 
of absence, and for chances of appointment in the regular army, 
wdien mustered out as volunteers. As a consequence, the more 
submissively they act, the more probabilities exist for such ad- 
vancements and other favors which they are desirous of obtain- 
ing. Upon these officers, in turn, the soldiers are dependent for 
the promptness of their pa}^, for humane treatment, for fur- 
loughs, for relief from exhausting duties and exposure, for con- 
siderate forbearance, in view of the petty breaches of discipline, 
and for numerous other mitigations of the hardships of military 
service. 

In addition to the official, the sutler influence is of vast weifirht 
in making an arm}' a machine, as it were, subject to the control 
of that political party, which for the time, has in its hands the 
power of the government. The sutlers are a class of men 
i:snally destitute of all moral principle, and such as have secured 
through official friends, their privilege of fleecing the ignorant 
soldiers ; they, as a consequence, become serviceable adjuncts in 
the hands of unscrupulous politicians, to influence the will of the 
soldiers in the army. In view, therefore, of the 'subordinated 
relationship and dependence between the governing party in a 
country and its armies, what more potent instrumentality of des- 
potism can be thought to exist than a voting army machine ? 

Another phase of the new era was the management of the 
freed negroes of the South after their liberation from bondage. 
The propriety of the emancipation of the slaves was made to 
rest upon the assumption of the equality of men of all races ; 
and that all men are worthy of freedom, and capable of enjoying 
its fruits and advantages. The truth of this assumption being 
accepted, it should have seemed needless to resort to additional 
pains in behalf of the negro after his emancipation had been 



S44 A REVIEW OF THE 

secured. Eut not so ; for Mdien this was once accompli slied, tlie 
freednian (whose inferiority was felt by all) must next be taken 
under society and governmental tutelage ; first, for his subsistence 
and secondly in order to fit him for that position in society which 
his liberators were secretly but busily carving for him. The 
young, the aged and the infirm negroes of those districts, rescued 
from the Confederates, must be supported by that Government 
whieh had effected their emancipation. The families of those 
who had enlisted in the Union armies, were at least, as was 
argued, become the especial wards of their charitable libcTators. 
In a word, all the f reedmen were the especial objects of abolition 
care and attention ; and their education and preparation for all 
the functions of manhood, were inaugurated with unparalled zeal 
and enthusiasm. 

Schools were established amongst the freedmen ; and industrious 
teachers entered upon the work of communicating to the emanci- 
pated slaves the rudimentary elements of an English education. 
As citizenship was the goal of all these efforts, a preliminary 
question for consideration should have been to have inquired 
into the nature of modern civilization; and ascertained the 
requisites of the American citizen. It should have been borne 
ill mind that with all the developments of modern progress and 
enlightenment, it still remained a question of great doubt 
whether good government can long endure the strain of the uni- 
versal suffrage of even the Caucasion race alone. If a large 
proportion of the civilized race have been found utterly incapa- 
ble of wielding the ballot in the furtherance of individual views, 
could it reasonably be suj^posed that the lowest barbarian race 
should be able to do so ? Might it not have been well to have 
remembered the axiom of philosophic thinkers, that a race can 
sustain that form of civilization alone, which it was originally 
able to germinate ? And especially did it seem inconsistent that 
the ardent advocates of negro education and elevation, should 
come from that same party of Americans, who had heretofore 
criticised democratic extension of the right of suffrage to the 
foreign emigrants who landed upon our shores. A large proj)or- 
tion of these foreigners possessed a much higher order of educa- 
tion than it was possible for the freed negroes to attain. But the 
principles of these anti-foreign suffragists, at once seemed to 
midergo a sudden change, and the emancipated Africans appeared 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, C!5 

to loom up in their imaginations as the idea. Americans of future 
ages. 

The crop of corruption that so luxuriantly sprung up with the 
new era, and also proved one of its features, was evidence that 
an enemy had entered the lields of the republic, and scattered 
impurities baneful to representative government. How could it 
be otherwise when men were honored with the highest trusts of 
of the nation, who had coiled their v/ay to power by means 
of the basest appliances of debauchery and political prostitution ? 
At no period before in the history of government had men been 
honored with the highest appointments by the Executive of the 
nation, and by Congress, whose whole former career had been 
one continued succession of villainy and fraud fi-om their first 
entry upon the career of public life. One man, Simon Cameron, 
had been selected to a seat in the Presidential Cabinet, and 
afterwards transferred to a ministerial position abroad, wdio with 
a blasted reputation had secured, as was generally charged, a 
Senatorial chair in the Congress of the United States by the 
means of filthy lucre, and the basest strategy that could be em- 
ployed. Another, Thaddeus Stevens, a man long reputed as one 
of the most corrupt politicians of his State, by the selection of 
his political associates, had been made Chairman of the Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means, the most important and responsible 
position in the Lower House of Congress. 

In the distribution of governmental favors, no discrimination 
^vas made between men of corrupt antecedents and- those of un- 
blemished reputations. This in itself was to cast away entirely tlie 
scales of moral scrutiny. It was essentially the introduction into 
the workings of government of that thoroughly debasing norm 
of social life, which treats that individual with most consideration 
who possesses the largest sum of money, whether the same be the 
acquisition of honorable effort or otherwise. Besides, what other 
but an augmenting demoralizing influence could the breach of 
plighted Presidential faith produce upon the minds of the masses 
of society, who are always more ready to imitate the vices of 
their rulers rather than their virtues ? 

Indeed, the Republican party seemed in a large measure to be 
the fountain from which political corruption flowed. In differ- 
ent Northern Legislatures accusations of bribery and all other 
corrupting influences were charged in the newspapers of both 



846 A REVIEW OF THE 

political parties. It was ventilated in the partisan slieets, tliat 
the sum of $25,000 had been tendered a member of the Legis- 
lature of Pennsjdvania in the TVinter of 1863, for the vote that 
would determine the election of a leading Republican to the United 
States Senate.* Stalking corruption had also raised its filthy 
head in the New York Legislature. It was publiclj charged in 
the newspapers that Callicott, a corrupt democratic representative 
of the State of New York, in consideration of the Speakership 
of the Assembly, had allowed himself to be bribed by the 
Republicans to support their measures, and assist them in the 
election of a United States Senator. The following extract from 
tlie Tribune, depicts the corruption of the New York Legislature, 
both branches of which were Republican : 

" If we are to credit information that reaches us from most respectable 
sources, the Legislature now sitting at Albany, is fast earning a reputa- 
tion for profligacy. We are well assured that there are committees of 
either branch, that levy regular assessments on bills passing through 
their hands, demanding $100 to 1^500 for those of considerable impor- 
tance, but taking $50, or even $20 each, when the measure is of secondary 
consequence, and no more can be had. ' How much money is in this 
bill T is the first inquiry when a proposition is submitted- ' Have they 
got the money here in Albany ?' comes next. Promises to pay when the 
bill becomes a law, or at the close of the session, are scouted ; and offers 
of interests in the enterprise to be promoted very rarely command atten- 
tion. 

" A friend who recently spent a day at the Capitol, represents the pre- 
valent corruption as more general and shameless than was ever before 
known. How much has been or must be paid for this or that report or 
vote ; how many members are ' interested ' in the passage of this or that 
bill ; how A or B was ' fixed ' as to this robbery, or by whom C was seen 
in behalf of that gauge, is discussed as cooly and openly as the time 
made in the last notable race, or the cost of double locks on the Erie 
canal. And the lobby is represented as more numerous, more impudent, 
and more shameless than ever before."! 

From the inauguration of the new era, was witnessed in an 
especial manner, a weakness of republican government ; and 
this because of the truckling subserviency of political leaders to 
policy, for the masses, even in educated communities, just as in 
ancient times, think only as their leaders advise them. The 
chains of despotism had been forged in great abundance, and 
every political right was virtually withdrawn from citizens, aild 



* New York World, January 24, 18G3. 
tQuoted in New York World, of April 18, 18G3. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 3-17 

placed in tlie keeping of tlie President of tlie United States. 
But for the falseness of the majority of the leaders, a cry for 
vengeance would have resounded throughout the land, and the 
Abolition traitors that had subverted liberty and the Constitu- 
tion of their country would have been driven into speedy exile, 
or exalted to gallows high as those upon which Ilaman swung. 

As before remarked, but two consistent parties existed in the 
JSTorth — the outspoken abolitionists who sought the overthrow 
of the system of Southern slavery, and the elevation of the 
emancipated negroes to equality with their former masters ; and , 
the unconcealed peace men, who opposed the prosecution of the 
war against the South as a violation of the Constitution, and an 
infraction of the principles upon which 'epublican government 
is based. Properly speaking, these two parties, which were 
purely consistent, were simply the antagonistic extremes of the 
respective organizations with which they operated, and neither 
the peace men nor the Abolitionists could enlist full Democratic 
or full Republican endorsement. It must have been clear, how- 
ever, to every penetrating Republican, after the commencement 
of the new era, that the measures sustained by his party could 
lead to no other result than that which was desired by the revo- 
lutionary Abolitionists. In sustaining the prosecution of the 
war, then, what else was he doing save perpetuating the delusion 
that the war was waged for the restoration of the Union ? 

The masses of the people of the North, of both political par- 
ties, cared little whether slavery lived or died in the struggle 
that was being waged between the sections. Indeed, slight 
doubt can exist that in the abstract, Northern Democrats as well 
as Republicans, were disinclined in sentiment to the institution 
of slavery : and that as a choice, they preferred in their own 
minds to see an end to the system of Southern bondage rather 
than its perpetuation. Republicans who were not confirmed 
Abolitionists, very nearly agreed in their views of slavery with 
the most of the Democrats themselves ; and yet all these were 
devotedly attached to the Union of the States , and in its preser- 
vation they considered their future liberty and happiness to be 
involved. The Democrats, who were in favor of peace at any 
price, were those who viewed the war as an utter ^delation of the 
Constitution ; and these, as before noted, formed the only con- 
sistent opponents of the Abolitionists, who from the first de- 



848 A REVIEW OF THE 

signed the destruction of slavery, and all the constitutional 
guarantees upon which it was based. 

The great attachment of the Il^^orthern people to the Union, 
was the result of pure delusion, the product of prejudice and 
popular fancy ; which could see liberty and republican happiness 
alone in its preservation. In this particular the I^orthern people 
differed little from the ancient Komans, who were so devoted to 
the name of the Republic that they were unable to perceive the 
loss of their freedom, whilst the naked form of that which they 
adored was preserved ; and whilst the name of king would have 
driven them to revolt, that of iiiiferator (euriperor,) a more des- 
potic title, was by no means discordant to their sensibilities. 

Reflecting men, after the full installation of the new era, saw 
that the shadow of the old Union alone remained ; but that its 
substance had fled. The number, however, of those who per- 
ceived the popular delusion, as regards the Union, and were suf- 
flcienlly honest and courageous to attempt to dispel it, were too 
few to accomplish the mighty task. It is always easier to accom- 
pany currents than to attempt to strive against them. A bold- 
ness is demanded of the man, who dares to question popular 
opinions, that is not possessed by a large portion of mankind. 
Only true freemen are competent for this undertaking ; and 
whilst these pass through the flres of martyrdom, hyj)ocritical 
demagogues gather applause and honors amidst popular ruin and 
governmental shijDwreck. Owing to the original yielding of the 
Democratic party to the false demands of fanaticism, the whirl' 
pool currents obtained too strong a hold upon the vessel of State 
any longer to be resisted ; and all was now rapidly sinking in one 
common vortex of destruction. 

The Kew York and other riots of 18G3, were simply the 
natural reaction against the tyrannical despotism that had encir- 
cled its coils around the American Republic ; and which, like 
Laocoon, was dying encompassed in serpentine folds. But for the 
delusive devotion to the Union which had blinded the people so 
that they were unable to perceive civil liberty, save as an efflux 
from their favoi'ite idol, instead of unorganized resistance to 
Federal conscription, the flames of Northern revolution would 
have burst from their confines and quickly consumed the gilded 
fabric of despotic tyranny, which abolition fanaticism had erected. 
The thunders of denunciation which, but for the above delusion. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 349 

would have advised the administration of Abraham Lincohi of 
its criminal violation of the Constitution, in the arrest of Clement 
L. Yallandigham, the patriot of Ohio ; instead of inducing 
replies of attempted justilication from the daring usurper, would 
have hushed him into the silence of contempt, and admonished 
him of the volcano of revenge that was ready to overwhelm all 
who dared to repeat the foul deed which his servile minion had 
perpetrated. 

In the latter part of the year 18C3, the political parties again 
began to prepare their platforms for the Autumn elections. Tlie 
Republican leaders, conscious of the unpopularity of the differ- 
ent unconstitutional acts that had been passed by the E.ump 
Congress, and enacted by the Presidential dictator, deemed it 
politic to conceal from the public that such measures received 
party endorsement. This was simply to continue the same hypo- 
critical method pursued by Republican leaders from the hrst 
organization of their party in 1855. That method consisted in 
the enunciation of a platform of principles, and after power had 
been grasped to steadily act disregardful of pledges. The New 
York Herald spoke of the Republican State Convention, held in 
September, 1863, at Syracuse, as follows : 

" The Emancipation Proclamation, the Confiscation Act, arbitrary 
arrests, the suppression of the freedom of speech and of the press in the 
loyal States, the Indemnity Act and the Conscription Act, have not been 
endoi'sed. The Emancipation Act received only a qualified endorsement. 
All reference to it was omitted in the regular series of resolutions, as 
reported by the Committee and adopted by the Convention. But a radi- 
cal, having moved its endorsement, this was adroitly evaded by an 
ainendmeiit endorsing it simply as a war measure.'' 

The revolutionary Republicans, before this time, had clearly 
mapped out the boundaries they intended to traverse. Charles 
Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, and other leaders of the same senti- 
ments, had already indicated clearly that their aim was the terri- 
torialization of the seceded "States ; and that their re-admittance 
into the Union should be fully interdicted until the total prohi- 
bition of slavery within their borders could be secured. The con- 
servative policy advocated by the political Republicans, with 
whom, for popularity sake. President Lincoln pretended to sym- 
pathize, simply demanded the restoration of the Union, and of 
the States in statu quo ante helium. Sumner and Stevens 
represented the real, the Republican manipulators the ostensible 



S50 A REVIEW OP THE 

policy of abolitionism. The one formed the line of attack, the 
other the protecting columns that came upon its flanks and 
formed its steady support. The preparation of the State and 
other platforms was the work of that crafty body of politicians, 
whose principal object was party success. Even the Republican 
convention of Massachusetts, in 1863, only endorsed the Eman- 
cipation Proclamation as a war measure. 

The Democratic party, eqally with the Republican, permitted 
its platforms to be drafted by its politic men. Mozart Hall was 
necessitated to yield to Tammany ; and the popular sails were again 
unfolded to the breeze, in order to still further perpetuate the 
delusion that cowardice and craft had originally permitted. The 
Herald spoke of the Albany Democratic State Convention, and 
as compared with the Syracuse Republican, as follows : 

" They are both entirely conservative. They both return thanks to 
our brave soldiers, who are now risking their lives in defense of the 
Union. They both pledge their supporters to sustain the Government 
and the Administration in all necessary measures for the suppression of 
the rebellion. They both express the desire of the people of the North for 
an honorable peace. They both oppose disunion and maintain the integ- 
rity of the Union. They differ in this: the Democrats condemn the 
Emancipation Proclamation, Confiscation, Conscription and the Indem- 
nity Acts ; while the Republicans shuffle out of the responsibility.of these 
acts, and only endorse the Emancipation Proclamation as a war meas- 
ure."* 

In other States, the war policy of the Government for the 
restoration of the Union, was also approved, in words, by the 
Democratic party. Its ambiguous conduct was illustrated in the 
States of Maine, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, during the camj)aigns 
of 1863. In these States war platforms were adopted and peace 
men nominated in each of them as the candidates for Governor. 
In Peimsylvania, George W. Woodward, a conspicuous peace 
man, whose opinions and sentiments Avere known to harmonize 
with the cardinal principles of the old party of Jefferson, per- 
mitted himself to be induced to write a letter, a few days before 
the October election, in which he expressed his approbation of 
the war policy for restoring the Union. This was enough to 
destroy all the enthusiasm felt in behalf of his election ; for no 
others, save peace men, could be enthusiastic suj^porters of the 
Democracy. 



*New York Herald, September 13, 1863. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 3:1 

The result of the elections of 1863, were "Waterloo defeats iu 
the States where peace men were the candidates. C. L. Yallan- 
digham, the Democratic candidate for Governor, was defeated iu 
Ohio bj over one hundred thousand majority ; and George W. 
Woodward, in Pennsylvania, by upwards of fifteen thousand. 
The entire North, with the exception of ISTew Jersey, was swept 
by a hurricane of administration victories. The Democratic 
party was utterly overthrown ; and far more weakened and de- 
moralized than had it fought the battle beneath its real colors, 
by opposing the abolition war upon principle ; and though de- 
feated, its moral integrity would have been rescued ; and, like 
the young giant of the past, which it was, it would have returned 
to the combat with renewed strength, ready to grapple with its 
hated foe. Yallandigham and other peace men were signally 
defeated, because their cowardly compeers lacked the courage to 
follow honest leaders and urge their comrades to the onset. They 
permitted the enemy to be the attacking party and to crown 
their banners with victory. 



A REVIEW OF THE 



CHAPTER XXI. 



THE MILITARY SATRAPS. 



The utter inconsistency of making war for the preservation of 
a republican Union was clearly exemplified in every effort that 
was made by the coercion party, from the outbreak of hostilities 
between the sections. The first error having been committed, it 
was necessary, as a sequence, that a train of inconsistencies should 
follow. "When the j^rinciple of military force was once brought 
into requisition to compel the seceded States or the people 
thereof to obey the behests of a central authority, the principle 
of republicanism died and that of monarchy took its place. 

The principle of making war to coerce the people of the 
South being thus anti-republican, all the means required to sus- 
tain the war policy must necessarily be of the same character. 
It was the principle of domination, which was the reverse of 
consent, that upon which republican government is based. 
And yet so great was the clamor for coercive measures that all 
who denied to the Government the right to exert the strong arm 
of military power, were denounced as traitors and enemies of the 
Republic. The preservation of the Union being once determined, 
then, to depend upon the employment of force, it became alto- 
gether needless in coercionist opinion to consult the will of the 
people further than necessities required. And so far, therefore, 
as the aims of the revolutionists were attainable, success alone 
was considered. 

Instead of endeavoring to effect the conciliation of the dis- 
affected people of the South, as sound judgment would have 
dictated, one despotic advance after another was made by the 
men who shaped the abolition counsels of the nation. Besides 
those before this enumerated, another of the unconstitutional 
means made use of to retain the power already grasped, was the 
suppression of the freedom of the ballot in the States of Dela- 
ware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri ; and also in those parts 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 353 

of the otlier Southern States, over which the arms of the Federal 
Government had been successful. 

The Democratic party had aimed at compromise for the settle- 
ment of the difficulties between the North and the South j and 
the people by the adoption of their polic}^ would have prevented 
the rebellion from breaking out, as it did, and drenching the 
land in blood. Indeed, the acceptance of their policy at any time 
during the rebellion, would have stayed the tide of blood and led 
to a settlement of the sectional troubles. All the Southern rebels 
at any time demanded, was that their fair and constitutional rights 
as equals in the Confederate Union, should be recognized ; and 
to this they were justly and honorably entitled. For, even after 
the rebellion broke out and blood had been shed, though rebels, 
they did not cease to be American citizens and men ; and their 
rights were equally as deserving of being considered as before 
any acts of secession had taken place. And their rights were 
respected by all who loved the Union of the fathers as it had 
existed from the origin of the Government, and for the preser- 
vation of which, a hypocritical party pretended to have made 
war. But other objects than its preservation were to be secured, 
and any compliance with the principles which true republicanism 
demanded, would have been fatal to the objects that Abolitionism, 
through the pretence of devotion to the Union, sought to obtain. 
Fanatics were not now likely to permit the suspension of a 
strife which they had succeeded in enkindling, in order to allow 
the sections to adjust their disputes by any peaceful method, 
And, as Anti-Republican war had been made against the rebels, 
something of a similar nature also must be inaugurated against 
the peaceful citizens of those Southern States that remained in 
the Union. Many rights had already been wrested from the 
Northern Democrats, and others who disapproved of the war 
policy of the Government, in the suspension of the Habeas Corpus 
and in the suppression of freedom of speech, and of the press and 
other unconstitutional proceedings. But, because of the mfatua- 
ted delusion that had seized control of the minds of the Northern 
people, a greater excess in the despotic overthrow of civil rights 
by the Administration, was permissible in the Southern unseceded 
States, than in any portion of the loyal North. For it was unde- 
niable that the people of the whole South, as a unit, almost, 
believed that the party of Abraham Lincoln, was a revolutionary 



S54 • A REYIEW OF THE 

one; and that its principles wonld produce lasting disorder an3 
the destruction of the Confederate union of the States. Enter- 
tertaining these sentiments, could the body of the border people, 
after the unconstitutional proclamation of war, do else than 
sympathize with their Southern brethren, whose guaranteed 
i-ights were to be obliterated in the fiendish conflict that was 
beinar was-ed aojainst them ? 

o o o 

Instigated by the proclamation of freedom and the succeeding 
measures allied to it, were those which were framed to carry 
forward by the might of despotism the principles of emanicipa- 
tion, and firmly fix them in the legislation of the States and 
nation. The Government of the several border Slave States 
must be controlled by one or other means by the party of eman- 
cipation, and skillful plans were devised by which this could bo 
accomplished, A small and insignificant body of voters* in 
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri had sup- 
ported Mr. Lincoln for President, and in this was found the 
nucleus for the party of emancipation in these States, after the 
edict of January 1st, 1863. The balance of the citizens of these 
States who had cast their votes either for Douglas, Breckenridge 
or Bell, were considered by the rulers as more or less unsound 
advocates of the war policy of the Government, and of tha 
freedom of the slaves designed by it to be accomplished. 

The masses of a people, during periods of turbulence, like 
ours, seem always ready to lick the feet of power. By the 
wholesale arrests of Legislatures, and of infiuential citizens, 
effective resistance to the administration in the border Southern 
States was soon broken ; and the hands of truckling hypocrites, 
who sought to better their worldly condition 'at the exj)ense of 
honor and integrity, were strengthened. Shrewdly conceived 
/"oaths were prepared both for the voters and the officials of these 
States, so as to exclude from the polls and stations of trust, all 
h those who had heretofore been the respected citizens and ruling 

^ men of their several States and localities. And these oaths were 
so skillfully framed as to exclude from the jwlls, by virtue of 
,/\^ - apparent right, all voters who had extended aid or even cherished 

^ ' an}'- sympathy for the cause of the rebellious South. That they 



* In Delaware only 3,815 voters supported Lincoln for President in 18C0, 
S,394 in Maryland, 1,929 in Virginia, l,,oGl in Kentucky, and 17,028 iu 
■^•lidsouvi. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 855 

filionld Tiave cherished none snch, was to suppose an entire rever- 
sal of reason, and of the instincts of an enlightened humanity. 
Large numbers of the people of these States, being thus unable 
to accept the "wholly unconstitutional oaths, were disfranchised ; 
and the States, as a consequence, fell under the control of the 
few original Abolitionists, and of those perlidious and dishonorable 
classes who are ever ready, servilely, to bend their necks to the 
yoke of might, in order to grasp the thrift that fawning secures. 
Those who do so, however, are the ignoble souls of life, who are 
fitted for servitude, but unworthy of freedom, because unen-, 
dowed with the traits needed for its maintenance. 

In one election in the city of Baltimore, after the inauguration 
of the new schedule, full two-thirds of the citizens refused to go 
to the polls to tender their votes. They chose rather to preserve 
their honor, than sacrifice it in a vain effort to resist the authority 
of that unreasoning party, which wielded the sword of an arbi- 
trary despotism. 

The method which the revolutionists made use of to control 
the elections in these States, and defeat those who, in spite of 
unconstitutional oaths, dared to press their rights of freemen, 
was to send their military satraps, with soldiers, under the pre- 
tence of guarding the polls and preventing invasion and domestic 
violence. But the President of the United States had no right 
to send his military subordinates into any State to control or in- 
terfere with the elections, unless first requested so to do by the 
civil authorities. As in other matters, however, the Constitution, 
in this particular, was likewise violated with irapunityo In some 
cases, then, the citizens were intimidated from appearing to vote 
their sentiments, inasmuch as proclamations had been issued by 
the satraps which threatened seizure of the property of the dis- 
loyal. And voting against the Government was declared to be 
conclusive evidence of this disloyalty. In othea* instances, the 
citizens who were known to entertain democratic opinions, as 
they appeared to vote were arrested and detained in custody 
until the election was closed, and then they were discharged. 

In the "Winter of 1863, a convention of the Democratic party 
of Kentucky, assembled at Frankfort, for the purpose of making 
nominations for State officers, was dispersed by a Colonel Gil- 
bert, who commanded a regiment of troops. And when one of 
tlie Senators from this State afterwards demanded of the United 



350 A REVIEW OF TUB 

States Senate, that the conduct of the ofucer who interfered with 
that political assemblage of his State should be investigated, the 
demand was refused. The majority of this body, as then con- 
stituted, seenised to regard naught save partisan success, whether 
achieved by constitutional overthrow or otherwise. 

The following extract from the speech of Senator Powell, of 
Kentucky, of March 3d, 1864, gives an illustration of the con- 
duct of the military satraps in his State : 

"In many counties the name of the whole Democratic ticket was 
stricken from the poll book by the military authorities. In many voting 
places, and m entire counties of Kentucky, no man was allowed to vote 
for the ticket. In the county in which I live, the names on the Demo- 
cratic ticket were sti-icken from or not allowed to go into the poll books 
of three or four @f the voting precincts. It is asserted that in one pre- 
cinct of that county sixteen votes were cast, all for the Wickliffe ticket. 
The military then came there, took the poll books from the judges and 
clerk, returned them to head-quarters and stopped the election. 

"Sir, there is abundant evidence of the facts that I have indicated. 
Since the beginning of time there never was a more atrocious assault on 
free elections, than took place in many counties of Kentucky. In many 
places the candidates were arrested. In the First Congressional District 
Judge Trimble, the candidate for Congress, as loyal a man and as true 
to the Constitution and Union of his fathers as lives in the Union, was 
arrested by military authority. He was brouglit to the City of Hender- 
son, a town just without his district, and there he was kept in military 
confinement near a month until after the election was over. They told 
him if he would decline being a candidate for Congress they would 
release him. He would not so degrade his manhood as to decline the 
canvass at the bidding of military tyrants and usurpers, and he was kept 
in prison. They found that he would be elected by a large majority, 
notwithstanding his imprisonment, and then they sent the military over 
his district, and had his name stricken from the polls in almost every 
voting precinct in the district. The gentleman who beat him got some 
four thousand votes in a district that polls about twenty thousand." 

The pretended excuse for the interference of the military 
authorities in the election of Kentucky in 1863, was found in 
the declaration of martial law, in that State, by Gen. Burnside, 
the jailor of Yallandigham. This satrap of the Administration, 
assumed the right to subordinate civil to military authority, 
because, forsooth, one thousand rebels were yet found within tlie 
borders of that State. The true reason was, that in this man- 
ner, it was conceived a plausible excuse would be offered to his 
subordinates and their justifiers for their milawful and outrageous 
conduct. The excuse, however, was lame and impotent, for at 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 357 

the time, the small remaining number of rebels were leaving the 
State, and General Burnside had fifty thousand soldiers mider 
his command to confront them. 

But Federal soldiers were also sent to the polls in Maryland, 
and interfered with the elections in this State, although no pre- 
text therefor could be found in the existence of rebel soldiers in 
the old Gommonwealth. The freedom of elections was likewise 
overthrown by military interference in the other border Southern 
States. Governor Bradford, of Marjdand, in his protest against 
military interference with a free ballot in his State, speaks as 
follows : 

" On the day preceding the election, the officer in command of the 
regiment, which had been distributed among the counties of the Eastern 
shore, and who had himself landed in Kent County, commenced his 
operations by arresting and sending across the bay some ten or more of 
the most estimable and distinguished of its citizens, including several of 
the most steadfast and uncompromising loyalists of the shore. The jail of 
the county was entered, the jailor seized, imprisoned, and afterwards sent 
to Baltimore, and the prisoners confined therein, under indictment, were 
set at liberty. The commanding officer referred to, gave the first clue to 
tlie character of the disloyalty, against which he considered himself as 
particularly commissioned ; by printing and publishing a proclamation, 
in which, referring to the election to take place next day, he mvited all 
the truly loyal to avail themselves of that opportunity to establish their 
loyalty, ' hy giving a full and ardent sujjport to the lohole Government 
ticket, upon the platform, adopted hy the Union League Convention ;' de- 
claring that, ' none other is recogni&ed by the Federal authorities, as loyal 
or worthy of the support of any one, who desires the peace and restoration 
of the Union.'''" 

When these outrageous proceedings were reported in the United 
States Senate, and referred to the Military Committee, instead 
of condemnation they received the approval of the committee in 
a long report, which set up a full justification for all that had 
been done. The tyrant's plea of necessity v/as the prolific re- 
pository, whence all excuses were drawn for the violation of the 
Constitution and the laws of the States. The Senators of the 
revolutionary party, in general, defended all the unconstitutional 
acts of the military satraps ; and thus granted to the Adminis- 
tration and its subordinates full license to trample upon the free- 
dom of elections in the Southern States. 

By such means, this freedom was destroyed ; and the revolu- 
tionary party, calling itself Union, obtained the control of 
Maryland, "West Yirginia and Missouri. For a time, also the 



358 A REVIEW OF THE 

freemen of Delaware and Kentucky were defeated by the revo- 
lutionists. It was not astonishing, then, that conventions elected 
under the dictation of the military satraps ; and when large 
numbers of the best citizens of these States were disfranchised 
by means of unconstitutional test oaths, should be ready to do 
the work of abolitionism. In West Virginia, Maryland and 
Missouri, conventions were elected under military dictation ; and 
these bodies proceeded to decree the emancipation of slavery 
within their borders. 



rOLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA- S59 



CHAPTER XXII. 



THE GREAT CONSPIRACY REVEALED. 



As events progressed, during the period of tlie rebellion, tlie 
conspiracy to overthrow slaveiy, change the status of Southern 
society, and elevate the negro race to equality with the white, 
more and more displayed itself. Ujjon the assembling of the 
Thirty-eighth Congress, in December 1863, President Lincoln 
craftily submitted a plan for the restoration of the rebellious 
States to unionship, when the armed resistance should be so far 
overcome as to warrant measures for this purpose. As the 
chief representative of the nation, it was expected of him that 
some method would be pointed out, by which the seceded States 
should again be numbered amongst the Commonwealths of the 
Federal Union. 

The President fully understood the disharmony that reigned 
in his party upon the question of Southern reconstruction, and 
in view of this, greater caution was needed to be observed by 
him, in submitting a plan for the restoration of the seceded 
States. He was well aware that the State suicide theory of 
Charles Sumner, was that which received the approval of Thaddeus 
Stevens, Salmon P. Chase, Wendell Phillips, and the other 
radicals of the Eepublican party ; and at the same time he was 
sufficiently astute to perceive that this policy was as yet too ex- 
rreme to meet public approval. 

In the submission of his method of restoration for the Southern 
States, it is not to be believed, that the President meant to fix 
any definite mode ; but it was rather enunciated and designed to 
serve as a toy for conflicting sentiment, and to be molded to suit 
public opinion as the same became more developed. Indeed, the 
President declared his plan as not intended to exclude others in 
the following words of his proclamation of December 8th, 1863 : 

" And while the mode presented, is the best the Executive can suggest, 



000 A REVIEW OF THE 

with liis present impressions, it must not be understood, that no other 
possible mode would be acceptable." 

That the President or his party should at all be trammeled by 
obligations of governmental compacts, was not to be expected 
after the entire repudiation of plighted faith, on their part, 
that had already been witnessed. Firm adherence to any promise 
or obligation would have been fatal to the principles of the rev- 
olution, for the accomplishment of which, the Republican party 
had been originally organized and brought into power ; and a 
studied caution, as a consequence, therefore, was required to be 
observed in the submission of any plan of reconstruction, so as 
to permit any change of policy which ever varying circumstances 
might require. The President, in truth, had in his mind no iixcd 
mode of restoration that he esteemed more than another, save as 
it might aid Abolition views ; and his only object in submitting 
the one which he did, was to answer public expectation on that 
point. 

The plan proposed by the President for restoring the Southern 
States to their former relationship in the Union, was in entire 
harmony with the prior Abolition programme. It was the em- 
bodiment of the principles of monarchy and revolution ; such as 
we have discovered to have given tone to so-called Republicanism, 
from its earliest advent to power. The fears that induced the 
slave States to rebel in defense of their constitutional rights, 
were entirely overlooked. No tender of assurance was made, 
that the anticipations on their part had been groundless ; but the 
attitude assumed by the President, still more clearly proved that 
Southern Statesmen had not been mistaken, in their conceptions 
of the danger that threatened their institutions. Like a con- 
queror, on the contrary, and despot which he was, utterly regard- 
less of the fears and anticipations of those contesting his power, the 
President announces his jjlan of forcing all the armed resistance 
under his dominion and authority. He declares in explicit terms 
that slavery must be abandoned in all the rebellious States ; and 
even in those sections of them in which he himself had made an 
exception in his Emancipation Proclamation of January 1st, 
1863.J Treating the Southern Confederates as traitoi-s and out- 
laws, he compels them before they shall be permitted to secure 
again for their several Commonwealths, the right of Statehood, 
to accept an oath not demanded by the Constitution ; and which 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN A^IERICA. 361 

110 democratic freeman of tlie ISTortli, with a sense of manhood, 
would have subscribed. This odious oath, required of all voters, 
before being re-clothed with citizenship, to swear to abide by and 
support all acts of the Federal Congress, passed during the re- 
bellion with reference to slaves ; and also to support all procla- 
mations of the President, made or to be made during the rebellion, 
which had reference to the same. A delusive exception, it is 
true, was inserted, should these laws and proclamations at any 
*ime be modified by Congress or the Supreuie Court. The Pres- 
ident, llowe^'er, too well understood the designs of Congress, to 
fear aught from that quarter ; and as to the Supreme Judiciary, 
it had been for some time a topic of discussion to so remodel 
this ti'ibunal, as to render it harmless to Abolition progress, should 
any danger in that direction be seriously apprehended. 

What an entire disregard of republican princij)le did the 
Presidential mode of reconstruction manifest ? It was a plain 
violation of the Constitution, which clothed the Chief Magistrate 
with no power to dictate the qualiiications of suffrage in any 
State or Territory. It was an entire reversal of the cardinal 
jM-inciple of Democracy in essaying to found government upon 
the will of a small minority of the peo23le of a State, rather than 
upon that of the majorit}^ Again, the method proposed by the 
President seemed strongly to imply his own disbelief in the 
current assertion of his party, that in all the rebellious States a 
niajority of the people were loyal and attached in feeling to the 
Federal Government, He, himself, upon any other hypothesis, 
had condemned the war against the South as an outrage and a 
crime. But when he comes to find voters who shall brina: back 
the rebel States into the Union, this majority of Southern patriots 
would seem to have escaped his recollection, inasmuch as his 
restoration plan was so framed, as did he think that it might be 
necessary, in some cases, to be satisfied with one-tenth of the 
citizens of a rebel State, out of whom his loyalists should be 
manufactured. And that a smaller number than the one-tenth 
of the people should constitute the basis of citizenship for recon- 
structing a seceded State, would scarcely have been proposed by 
the most radical revolutionist of the North. 

But, admitting even a modicum of truth in the Abolition 
assumption of the loyalty of a majority of the Southern people ; 
the policy of restoration proposed by President Lincoln, claimed 



302 A REVIEW OF THE 

the right to do what the Constitution in express terms forbade. 
Tliis instrument prechided the taking of the private property of 
any citizen for public purposes or otherwise, unless ample com- 
pensation therefor should be made. And yet the President, in 
the plan submitted by him, proposed, without any recompense, 
to cancel the value, and destroy all the slave property in the 
rebel States, whether the same belonged to loyal or disloyal indi- 
viduals. Ly this high-handed exercise of desjjotic might, the 
fears entertained by the Southern people of the designs of 
Northern fanaticism were fully sustained ; and the rebellion from 
this period, at furthest, must ever stand justified in history. The 
rebels, anticipating the designs of abolitionism, from the collected 
utterances of the leaders of that part^^, originally revolted against 
its rule in behalf of their constitutional rights and privileges ; 
and now, when their surmises had been verified in the action of 
the Federal President and the congressional radicals, what was to 
condemn the rebellion? Instead of rebels arrayed, striving to 
destroy the Union and the Constitution, the Confederates stood 
before the world as patriots, defending within their States, in 
essence, that same Constitution and the principles of republi- 
canism guaranteed by it. 

But despotic and unconstitutional as was the Presidential plan 
of reconstructing the seceded States, it by no means met the 
approbation of the radicals in Congress and throughout the 
North. Negro suffrage from this period, began to peer forth as 
one of the measures that must be secured in the revolution that 
was being urged forward. This, indeed, was a part of the great 
conspiracy that was now daily revealing itself. 

The doctrine of human equality, being that which lay at the 
foundation of abolitionism, it was not to be supposed that the 
fanatics should halt with the achievement of simple emancipa- 
tion. The more evidence the progress of arms gave the hopeful 
enthusiasts that the rebellion would probably, in the end, be 
overcome, the more effort was made by them to shape legislation 
in the interests of race equality. All the conflicting views re- 
gp,rding the restoration of the States to Federal autonomy, 
hinged therefore upon this question. Hitherto, emancipation 
was the principal result of equality, that was presented before 
the people in the agitating crusades that had been waged against 
Southern slavery. But shortly after the meeting of the Thirty- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 363 

eic-litli Congress, and tlie submission of the Presidential plan of 
reconstruction ; revolutionary leaders come forward and took 
open grounds in favor of extending the right of suffrage to the 
emancipated slaves of the seceded States. From this period the 
revolutionary party may be considered as composed of avowed 
negro and of anti-negro suffragists. And of the Latter, many 
were such, simply because they deemed it impolitic as yet openly 
to avow their principles. 

There can be little doubt even that President Lincoln agreed 
with the negro suifragists, and that his characteristic hypocrisy 
alone deterred him from avowing the principle in his reconstruc- 
tion scheme of December 8, 1863. He was very solicitous, how- 
ever, to shift the avowal of the doctrine of negro suffrage upon 
others,* whose position more securely guarded them from the 
assaults of public opinion. Owen Lovejoy, a man equally radi- 
cal with Thaddeus Stevens, seemed to have fully understood the 
President's motives and feelings. In his letter of February 22d, 
1864, to William Lloyd Garrison, he speaks of the President in 
the following language : ■ 

" I write you, although ill health compels me to do it, by the hand of 
another, to express to you my gratification at the position you have 
taken in reference to Mr. Lincoln. I am satisfied, as the old theologians 
used to say in regard to the world, that if he be not the best conceiv- 
able President, he is the best possible. I have something of the facts 
inside during his administration, and I know that he has been just as 
radical as any of his Cabinet. And, although he does not do everything 
that you or I would like, the question recurs whether it is hkely we can 
elect a man who would. It is evident that the great mass of Unionists 
prefer him for re-election ; and yet it seems to me certain that the Provi- 
dence of God during another term will grind slavery to powder, "f 

* The following letter to Governor Hahn, of Loiiisiana, discloses the 
President's double dealing course of action : 

"Executive Mansion, ) 

" Washington, March 13, 1864. f 
" Hon. Michael Hahn. 

"My Dear Sir; — I congratulate you on having fixed your name in 
history as the first Free State Governor of Louisiana. Now you are 
about to have a convention, which, among other things, will probably 
define the elective franchise. I barely suggest, for your private consider- 
ation, whether some of the colored people may not be let in, as for 
instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought 
gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help in some trying time 
to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom. But this 
is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone. 

"Yours truly, 

"ABRAHAM LINCOLN." 
^Annual Cyclopedia of 1864, p. 480. 



364 A REVIEW OF THE 

The State suicide doctrine of Charles Sumner was inspired by the 
desire to secure in the Southern States for the negro, full equality 
with the Caucasian race. And all the efforts of Thaddeus 
Stevens and the other unconcealed revolutionists, to establish the 
principles of State destruction, the confiscation of Southern 
property, and the exclusion of Southern E-epresentatives from 
the halls of Congress, were influenced by the same desire. These 
men, the soul and spirit of their party, were compelled, however, 
to await the developments of time, whilst the treacherous hypo- 
crites within the same, were enabled still further to lure their 
countrymen into the snares that were set for them. The suicidal 
resolutions when first offered by Sumner, in 18G2, met the cold 
reception of silence ; and the Congressmen from Louisiana, and 
other military reconstructed States, were welcomed to the ]^a- 
tional Halls of the Thirty-seventh Congress, in spite of the oppo- 
sition of Mr. Stevens and others, who were keen -sighted enough 
as to see the logical effect of such admission. But Mr. Stevens 
and others who agreed with him, were able to exclude from the 
Thirty-eighth Congress A. P. Field and the other RejDresenta- 
tives of Louisiana and other subjugated States of the South. In 
their exclusion of Southern Representatives, additional evidence 
of the great conspiracy was presented. 

The belief of the equality of all races of mankind, having 
germinated the movement of abolitionism, the fanaticism must 
run its full length, the control of the Government being now, as 
believed, firmly grasped. ]^othing less than the complete politi- 
cal and social equality of races, would satisfy zealots who allow 
feeling rather tlian reason to guide them. And, as if to prove 
that their enthusiastic visions of human equality, could controvert 
logic and all the experience of anterior ages, they set themselves 
to work to elevate a race, fitted alone for barbarism or subordi- 
nation. 

The education of the colored race in the District of Columbia 
having been determined upon, after the act of Emancipation had 
passed, every other step must be taken in order to elevate the 
newly liberated man up to the full measure of perfect equality. 
As the Africo-American freedman had been introduced into the 
J^orthern armies, his standing in that position must be guarded ; 
and all offences to his latel}' achieved dignity, ]:;esented by a Con- 
gress, desirous of obliterating the repugnant decrees of eternity. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 803 

And when a shoulder-strapped member of the enfrancliised, race 
found himself forcibly ejected from the cars in the City of 
"Washington, the elevators of the colored men were aroused to 
the utmost ; and a law was speedily enacted by Congress which 
precluded the officers of the railroad companies of the City of 
Washington and Georgetown, from determining what regulations 
should be observed with regard to their passengers. No negro 
dare in future be ejected from any railroad cars in the District, 
under a severe penalty. It was not enough for the colored 
American that he be provided by the railroad companies with 
equal facilities for travel, and cars of equal quality with white 
people, he must be allowed to obtrude himself into white com- 
pany, where his presence was offensive. This kind of legislation 
was an attempt to undo what God had done ; that is, to obliterate 
the distinctions which he had made. Herein another evidence 
of the great conspiracy was disclosed. 

Equalizing the compensation of all the soldiers in the armies, 
whether of African or Caucasian descent, was a part of the 
schedule that radical legislation must complete. And, as no 
Member of Congress seemed to long more ardently for this form 
of equality than Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, and he who 
stood the acknowledged leader of revolutionary radicalism in the 
House, Thaddeus Stevens, it was aj)propriate and fitting that 
these distinguished representatives should be the first to propose 
the desired legislation. Accordingly, on the 8tli of January, 
1864, Mr. Wilson introduced into the Senate a bill to promote 
enlistments, which provided that all persons of African decent, who 
may have been mustered into the military service of tlie United 
States shall receive the same uniform, clothing, arms, equipments, 
camp-ec[uipage, rations, medical and hospital attendance, pay and 
emoluments, as other soldiers of the regular and volunteer forces 
of the like arm of the service. After a spirited contest in the 
Senate, the bill as above proposed in substance was adopted in 
that body ; and on the 30th of April, Mr. Stevens called it up in 
the Lower House of Congress. The measure likewise met the 
approbation of the House, and colored soldiers were placed on an 
equality with white from January 1st, 1864. " The Attorney- 
General has finally decided, that colored soldiers are in all respects 
entitled to the same compensation as white soldiers." * 

* Henry Wilson's Anti-Slavery Measures in Congress, p. 313, • 



866 A REVIEW OF THE 

The most persistent efforts were made by tlie radicals in the 
first session of the 38th Congress, in both the Senate and Honse 
of Representatives, to allow the negro to grow to the fnll stature 
of free manhood, with which he, however, was but simply in the 
process of being endowed. lie was clothed by Act of Congress 
Avith the right of appearing in all the courts of the United States 
as a witness, not so much because this privilege was then espe- 
cially demanded, but rather because it was believed that it would 
aid in the final extirpation of slavery, the first grand object of 
the revolutionists. The repeal of the law, which precluded ne- 
groes from carrying the mails, was also strongly m'ged during 
this session, chiefly for the same reasons. 

In this session of Congress, a Bill was prepared in the House, 
providing for the organization of the Territory of Montana, and 
having passed the same in the usual form, was remitted to the 
Senate for its approval. When the Bill came up for consideration 
in this body. Senator Wilkinson, of Minnesota, moved to strike 
out of section five, of the organizing Act, which prescribed who 
should be voters, the words " white male inhabitant," and insert 
" male citizen of the United States, and those who have declared 
their intention to become such." The undenied object of th^ 
amendment, was to secure the organization of the new Territory 
in accordance wdth the principles of the avowed Abolitionists, 
who already were beginning to urge that the right of suffrage 
should be extended to the negro race. Prominent members of 
the party in different sections of the ITorth, had already given 
ntterance to tliis recent demand of Abolitionism, 

The amendment met with a considerable opposition from 
Republicans themselves, chiefly because they feared to encounter 
in the coming Presidential canvass the opposition that would 
array itself against the principle of negro suffrage. The majority 
of the Senators, however, all Republicans, showed themselves 
as favorable to universal suffrage by supporting the amendment. 
It was carried in the Senate by 22 yeas to 17 nays. Several of 
the Senators who supported the amendment made no conceal- 
ment that they heartily favored the principle which it expressed ; 
its adoption by the Senate, however, was admitted to be a pure 
abstraction, as not one negro inhabitant at the time was found in 
the new Territory. And of those also, who deemed it impolitic 
to agitate the question of suffrage at the time, in view of the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 367 

appi'oacliing Presidential election, were some who declared them- 
selves as not opposed to granting negroes the right of Toting. 

The submission and support of the amendment in the Senate, 
was the first clear proof that the Republican leaders were ready, 
when a fair opportunity would present itself, to extend the right 
of suffrage to all races of men, Uj) to this period they had 
studiously sought to elude the avowal of this principle, and pos- 
itively averred that no such design was at all entertained by them. 
In the most solemn assurances, they declared that the emancipa- 
tion of the negroes from the chains of slavery, would be the ulti- 
mate limit of humanitarian eifort in behalf of the degraded 
]"ace. It was even resented, as offensive, that they should be 
accused of the design of intending to open the ballot to ignorant 
African menials. But before the inauguration of the war, and 
for a time afterwards, had not they in equally strong terms re- 
sented the imputation, that the emancipation of slavery in the 
Southern States was designed by them ? 

The House of Representatives, however, declined to concur in 
the Senate's Amendment, because they saw clearly that negro 
suffrage would be too heavy a burden to carry in the Presidential 
contest of 1864. But enough was disclosed, from its adoption 
by the Senate, and from the sentiments that were beginning to 
be uttered by conspicuous radicals, favorable to this principle, to 
satisfy reflecting men, that it formed the main part of the great 
conspiracy that was rapidly revealing itself in its fullest extent. 

The full comj)letion of the conspiracy required the repudiation 
of the Fugitive Slave Laws, and also of that provision of the 
Federal Constitution which supported the Acts of 1793 and 
1850. A bill for this purpose having been referred to the Ju- 
diciary Committee of the Senate, was reported back adverselj^ 
Repeated efforts were made, prior to January 11th, 1804, to 
effect the repeal of the Act of 1850, and also that of 1793. At 
the latter date, on motion of Charles Sumner, the question of 
the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Laws was referred to a commit- 
tee of seven Senators, the majority of whom reported favorable 
to the measure. The Repealing Act received the approbation 
of the members of the revolutionary party in Congress, and was 
approved by President Lincoln, June 28th, 18G4, 

The bill was stubbornly resisted by the Democrats of both 
Houses of Congress, because of the violation which the repeal 



868 A REVIEW OF THE 

inflicted upon tlie Federal Constitution. The passage of tlio 
Repealing Act, in Democratic opinion, was aii open and palpable 
infraction of the bond of covenant, according to the terms of 
which the States had united to form the Union ; and for the 
preservation of which the radicals claimed that the war was being 
waged by the General Government. It was also argued by the 
Democrats that no practical good could result from the repeal at 
that time, as the slaves in the Border States were already in such 
a state of insubordination that they were free to go where they 
chose. All State control over the slaves had for months, prior 
to this period, almost entirely ceased in the Border States ; and it 
was only in these States that the law could be considered as of 
anv avail. But, besides, the ISlorthern people at that time would 
not have permitted any fugitive slave to be reclaimed in their 
midst by any Southern master, however loyal to the General 
Government he may have been. 

But in truth, the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Acts was simply 
a part of the programme which the revolutionary leaders, from 
the origin of their party, had designed, viz : to destroy slavery- 
regardless of every guarantee which the Constitution contained. 
The report was really nothing, save an Act of the purest des- 
potism and revolution, of which history affords an instance. It 
was utterly unwarranted and unjustilied; and altogether as great 
a violation of civil right as w^ould communism be guilty of, should 
it ultimately assume to wrest all property from its possessors, and 
distribute the same as its principles would dictate. 

The plan of reconstruction, submitted by President Lincoln, 
in December, 1863, although in entire accord with the principles 
hitherto acted on and approved by every branch of the Federal 
Government, could not, as we have already observed, meet with 
the approval of the radical leaders of his party. It was not 
upon its face, sufficiently revolutionary to meet the approbation 
of men, utterly regardless of all constitutional restraint whatso- 
ever. Members of Congress who were ready to avow that the 
war was carried on outside of the Co7istitutwn, as they viewed 
it, were not likely to agree with the Presidential plan of restoring 
the seceded States, to their Federal status in the Union. 

The main reason why the Executive plan of reconstruction did 
not meet radical approval, was as before remarked, because the 
principle of negro suffrage had been entirely ignored. Salmon 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. SCO 

P. Chase, a member of the President's Cabinet, in his letter to 
GerrrTSniTni, of March 2d, 1864, fpeaking of the plan submitted 
by the head of tlie J^ation, said : 

" The Amnesty Proclamatiou seems to fail. I don't like the qualifica- 
tion in the oath required, nor the limitation of the right of siilfrage to 
those who take the oath, and are otherwise qualified, according to the 
State laws, in force before the rebellion. I fear these are fatal conces- 
sions. Why should not all soldiers who fight for their country vote for 
it ? Why should not the intelligent colored man of Louisiana have a 
voice, as a free citizen, in restoring and maintaining loyal ascendency." j 

From the identity of sentiment tliat pervades this letter of fUe •■ 
Secretary, and that of President Lincoln, to Michael Halm, of 
Louisiana, before quoted, they would both seem to have flowed 
from the same school of abolition thought. And, although the 
Executive preserved himself before the country as the apparent 
conservative, his views j^ermitted him to drift beneath the cur- 
rent as an unseen revolutionist and a radical amongst his brethren. 
The question of reconstruction during the iirst session of the 
Thirty-eighth Congress, was viewed as a favorable one for agita- 
ting purposes. It was regarded as very different when Mr. 
Asliley introduced the same question in the early part of the 
Th rty-seventh Congress. The revolution, however, had now 
advanced so far that but little fear was entertained to discuss in 
Congress the most radical topics. The most extreme revolu- 
tionists were able, at length, to promulgate their views on the 
question of suffrage ; and so long as both Houses did not agree 
upon a measure, of this kind, the leaders had it in their power to 
deny that sucli opinions would ever be adopted by the Adminis- 
tration. 

On the 4th of May, 1864, Mr. Davis, of Maryland, Chairman 
of the Committee of the House, to whom had been referred the 
President's views upon the restoration of the rebel States, sub- 
mitted a Bill, embodying a fixed and elaborate plan of reconstruc- 
tion. This also, like the President's plan, was revolutionary as 
it assumed, without warrant and contrary to the former avowed 
policy of the Government, that the statehood of the seceded 
Commonwealths wei'e altogether overthrown. The war for the 
repression of the rebellion, from its outbreak, had been waged 
\ipon the principle that the rebellious States were still in the 
Union ; and that no act of secession could loosen the cords that 
held together the members of the old Confederacy. And the 



370 A EEVIEW OF THE 

policy of the Government, for a long time after tlie outbreak of 
the war, was so shaped, lest something might be done or omitted, 
which would operate as an admission that the rebel States had 
in law seceded. 

The bill prepared by the Keconstruction Committee of the 
House, provided for the appointment of a Provisional Governor 
by the President in each State declared to be in rebellion, to 
serve until a State Government should have been organized and 
recognized by the General Government. On the suppression of 
military resistance to the authority of the United States in any 
such State, an enrollment of white male citizens was to be made, 
and a convention was to be called, when a majority of them 
should have taken the oath of allegiance, to act upon the re-es- 
tablishment of a State Government. All persons having held 
any office in the rebel service, civil or military, State or Confede- 
rate, and all those having borne arms in such -service, were to be 
prohibited from voting for, or being elected as delegates to the 
State Convention, The convention was required by the bill to 
insert in the new Constitution to be formed by it, provisions dis- 
franchising those who " held or exercised any civil or military 
office, (except offices merely ministerial, and military offices below 
the grade of colonel) State or Confederate under the usurping 
power;" also, prohibiting slavery, and repudiating all debts 
created by or under sanction of the usurping power, State or 
Confederate. The State Government, thus created, was to be 
recoo-nized by the President after obtaining the assent of Con- 
gress, and only after such recognition was it allowed for the State 
to be represented in Congress and in the Electoral College. 
Slavery was further formally declared to be abolished in all tlie 
States in question, with remedies and penalties to give this decla- 
ration effect. Those rebels, holding any civil or military office 
with the conditions above stated, after this bill should become a 
law were declared not to be citizens of the United States.* 

The bill having passed the House of Eepresentatives, was sent 
to the Senate for its concurrence, and after some debate and 
interchano-e of sentiment between the two Houses, was finally 
adopted by the latter body. The President could not approve 
the reconstruction plan of Congress, without too openly exposing 



* Barrett's Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 503. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, B71 

himself to the charge of puerile vacIUation and breach of plighted 
faith ; for he was already fully committed to the recognition of 
the new State Governments of Louisiana and Arkansas. These 
States, in accordance with his own plan, had chosen Governors, 
changed their State Constitutions, and done whatever else was 
enjoined upon them to regain their lost Statehood in the Union, 
lie had likewise appointed Military Governors for other Southern 
States. Besides, no essential abolition advantage would be 
gained, even should the President append his signature to the 
Reconstruction Bill. He, therefore, shrewdly withheld it 

The culminating movement in the great conspirac}'', was that 
instituted to effect the final overthrow of Southern slavery, under 
the appearance of an apparent amendment to the Federal Con- 
stitution, This was an adroit, woli-planned scheme of the revo- 
iutionists, to obtain in the midf^t of and by means of revolution, 
the object of abolition zeal, the eradication of the hated institu- 
tion. The Constitution provided for an amendment, when the 
same having been proposed by the two-thirds of each House of 
Congress and submitted to the States, should be ratified by three- 
fourths of these. 

Shortly after the assembling of the Thirty-eighth Congress, 
with other revolutionary measures, an amendment to the Con- 
stitution abolishing slavery in all the States was proposed by 
James M. Ashley, the super-serviceable member of the Lower 
House of Congress from Ohio. And as evincing concert of 
action, a proposition with like design not long afterwards was 
also submitted in the Senate, and referred to the Committee on 
the Judiciary. 

After a time, the amendment having been matured, a joint 
resolution was offei-ed that the same be submitted to the States 
for ratification. The resolution aroused a spirited opposition 
upon the part of the Democrats, who saw nothing in it save a 
subtile and crafty method of subverting that very Constitution 
whicii the revolutionists, hypocritically, were preparing in name 
to amend. For did not the amendment propose to interfere with 
the social economy of the States, even of the unrebellious States, 
and with affairs over which the General Government had no 
authority to legislate or interfere ? It was in violation even of 
that resolution of the Chicago Convention of 1S60, M'hich de- 
clared that " the maintenance, inviolate of the rights of the States 



S73 A REVIEW OF THE 

and especially the right of each State, to order and control its 
own domestic institutions, according to its own judgment ex- 
clusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the per- 
fection and endurance of our political fabric depends." 

The Democrats took the position that changing the fundamen- 
tal charter of a country, was an action demanding so great 
solemnity that it should never be undertaken during a period of 
effervescence and civil commotion. Besides, no such pressing 
haste required an amendment to the Constitution to obliterate 
slavery, as the institution would prove well nigh invnlnerable, 
so long as Southern armed resistance was not overcome upon the 
l)attle held. But slavery being the mark of abolitionism, it was 
:iot to be expected that men deeply indoctrinated with its 
fanatical views could rest, save in exerting to the utmost their 
strenofth in one or other method for the extinction and destruc- 
tion of their hated foe. Statesmen of balanced minds, saw how- 
ever, the inutility of all such maddened legislation, provided 
the restoration of the Union was the object to be achieved. 

It was also argued that as the amendment proposed to interfere 
with social interests, its character was revolutionary. It was the 
introduction of a principle antagonistic to that wdiicli underlies 
all republican government. The Union was made for the polit- 
ical government of its members ; and only for certain specified 
objects of a very general nature. The management of domestic 
affairs, according to the letter and spirit of the compound system 
of the United States Government, was remitted entirely to the 
States and to their people. The General Government, by the 
Constitution, was entrusted wdth no control over the marital or 
religious relations of the people of the States, or with the right 
of eminent domain within their limits. All these w^ere social 
and State relations ; so also was the institution of slavery. 

Again, the Democrats view^ed the effort to destroy slavery by 
an amendment to the Constitution, as at variance with its spirit, 
as a breach of good faith, and wholly unjust in its method. It 
was a breach of faith, because the war had been prosecuted upon 
the assumption that the seceded States yet formed integral parts 
of the Union ; and being such, the Government was bound to 
see that the private property, at least of all loyal citizens, be pre- 
served unharmed. For even in a pure monarchical government, 
it is deemed due to all adherents of the crown, that they suffer 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 873 

no loss in person or estate by reason of others in their midst 
having rebelled. How then, in the rej)ublic of the United States, 
could such be deprived of their property, unless a fair compensa- 
tion were first made to them by the Government ? 

The leading Democrats of both Houses lirmly contended that 
the Constitution, could not legally be so amended, as to destroy 
slavery in the States without the unanimous consent of those 
States. Senator Saulsbury, of Delaware, in his speech of March 
31st, 1864, spoke as follows : 

"I firmly believe in the truth, that if the Senate of the United States 
were to adopt this joint resolution, and were to submit it to all the States 
of this Union, and if tliree-fourths of the States should ratify the amend- 
ment, it would not be binding upon any State whose interest was affected 
by it, if that State protested against it." 

*' I know that die popular theory is that a convention can frame a 
Constitution, and if three-fourths of the States ratify it, it is obligatory 
in reference to everything and anything they do. * * * * jf 
that be so, then I ask you, could three-fourths of the States say that you 
should have no manufactories, that you should plant no corn, that you 
should not have property in anything else which is the subject of 
property. 

"Sir, property is not regulated, and was not intended to be regulated 
by the Constitution of the United States. Property is the creature of the 
law of the State, and whenever this Government undertakes either by 
legislative enactment, or operating through and by three-fourtlis of the 
States to say to the people of any State, "we ivill lohat shall be property 
and what shall not be property in your midst ; that subject shall be regulated 
by a Federal Constitution or by a Federal law,''' they viorate the purposes 
and objects for which the Constitution was framed ; and do that which, 
if they had proclaimed had been their objoct in the beginning, would 
have prevented the formation of that Constitution, and of the Union. 

"Can Congress propose an amendment to the Constitution which, 
being ratified by three-fourths of the States, shall become the supreme law 
of the land, by Avhich there shall be an equal distribution of property 
throughout the United States? " - 

Senator Hendricks, of Indiana, on the same subject, in his 
speech of April 7th, 1864, said : 

" I am not satisfied that this proposed amendment is one that can be 
made to the Constitution. The institution of slavery is a domestic insti- 
tution. It exists not by virtue of the Federal Constitution, not by virtue 
of any law passed pursuant to the Constitution of the United States, but 
it had its existence before the formation of the Federal compact, before 
the establishment of the Federal Constitution. It was the Constitution of 
the Colonies." 

George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, a member of the House, in 

his speech of June 15th, 1864, said 



374 A REVIEW OF THE 

"There is in three-fourths of the States neither the power to estahlisli 
nor to abolish slavery in all the States. The Federal Government has 
power over the relations of the States with foreign nations, and over the 
relations of the States as between and among themselves. It has no power 
over tlie purely internal affairs of the State. This principle was aa 
familiar as household words three years ago. Every power delegated to 
the Federal Government, relates either to the inter-national or the inter- 
State relations of the United States. The domestic internal affairs of a 
State having no connection with the Federal Government, or with for- 
eign nations or with the other States, are reserved to the absolute, ex- 
clusive, sovereign power of the States respectively, and to the people 
thereof. The other States are not affected by them, and have no interesc 
in thein. The Federal Government has no cognizance of thein. The 
power of amendment, which is confided to thi-ee-fourtlis of the States, 
does not reach them nor the jiower to regulate them, but is limited to 
the subjects and powers delegated to the United States." 

The resolution pre posing' the submission to the States of the 
constitutional amendment, which should abolish slavery through- 
out the Union, passed the Senate April 8th, 18G4, by the strong 
vote of 38 yeas to 6 nays. The question was also considered in 
the House and a vote taken upon it June 15th ; but there was 
a failure to secure two-thirds of this body in its favor. The vote 
in the House was 95 yeas to 6G nays, the Democrats in general 
opposing the resolution. Four Democrats, however, believing 
a further defence of tlie Constitution hopeless^ voted with the 
majority. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 875 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGN OF 1864. 

The Presidential campaign of 1864, was an anomalous one in tLe 
history of the American Union. It was to be conducted during 
the existence of the most gigantic revolution which free govern- 
ment had ever experienced, since the commencement of time. 
The sectional party whicli had grasped the reins of Administration 
in 1860, had as before shown, been the result of the long period 
of agitation which had cemented together the fanatical elements 
of the ISTorth, and made the ruling aggregation of this section, 
a somewhat homogenous compound. 

But the long period of turbulence and civil war which had 
separated the sections of the country, had proved an eliminatino- 
process whicli had more and more strongly placed fanaticism and 
reason in opposition to each other. From the time when it was 
discovered, after the secession of the Cotton States, that the 
Eepublican leaders would not consent to settle the difficulties 
between the North and South by fair and honorable compromise 
the reasoning classes began to enter their protests; and, although 
this protesting was chiefly in. silence, it nevertheless had its influ- 
ence in molding the aspect of the parties of the country. From 
that period, reflective, men* began to drop their connection with 
the Republican, and become quietly absorbed in the Democratic 
party. And from the beginning of the war, during its whole 
progress, this process of separation was going on, and a counter 
elimination was likewise all this time taking place, which was 
drawing the most corrupt and selfish material from the Democratic 
into the so-called loyal party of the country. Fanaticism had at 
length become profitable ; and it was not unusual to find men 
who had figured as conspicuous friends of peace and compromise 

*It is not meant, however, to assert that all the reflecting men deserted 
the Republican paity ; but that many did so is undeniable. Interest and 
other motives detained sagacious men in the Republican party who could 
not be ranked as Abolitionists. 



376 A REVIEW OF THE 

turn out to be the most blatant advocates of the wai' and Southern 
subjugation. 

When the time approached that candidates should be selected 
for a Chief Magistrate of the United States to succeed Abraham 
Lincoln, the two parties of the country had become more dia- 
metrically antagonistic than had ever before been witnessed in 
the countr3^ The boiling caldron of war had stirred society to 
its foundation ; and its sedimentary dregs that heretofore had 
remained quiescent, were cast to the surface, and were exerting 
an influence not felt on former like occasions. The enthusiastic 
mob, the fanatical agitators, and the intolerant clergy of the 
North, found themselves in the so-called Republican party, which 
was bent upon crushing out all resistance to the Federal despot- 
ism reared by them ; and against these were arrayed the calm, 
considerative classes, who could only see destruction to free gov- 
ernment in the policy and movements of the party that sustained 
the war and its further prosecution. 

Never in the history of the country did the people's goveni- 
ment exhibit itself in such odious features. Its like had alone 
been seen during the dark and bloody epoch of the French revo- 
lution. The preservation of republicanism had ever, to thinking 
men, seemed problematical ; and the old Federal Union was 
believed to have afforded the most perfect illustration of a repre- 
sentative Republic which was anywhere to be found upon the 
globe. But all through th o representative system of the American 
tjnion, a necessary substratum of intellectual and cultivated 
society, from the formation of the Constitution, had firmly held 
the helm of State ; and cautiously guided it amidst the rocks 
and quicksands of social disorder, upon which like forms of gov- 
ernment had been wrecked. An intelligent and polished class of 
society existed in the Southern States, from the peculiar race 
subordination of that section, wdiich produced a succession of 
clear-headed statesmen, in whose estimation honor and integity 
formed guiding stars. The plan of the Federal Union itself was 
the conception of these eminent men ; and its unclouded pros- 
perity, until 1860, was owing to the influence they exerted in the 
maintenance of order and the repression of corruption. 

But, whilst Southern statesmen formed a Union with slavery 
it remained as the task of the intelligence of New England and 
the North to form a more perfect Union, where men of all 



POIUITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 877 

races should be equal, both socially and politically. J^orthern 
fanaticism, by means of the free school system, conceived this to 
be attainable, although in direct contravention to all anterior po- 
litical philosophy. Sound reason would rather have dictated a 
method of instruction, which would render each individual bet- 
ter fitted for the task and station of society, for which God and 
nature had chosen him ; for the statesman and the religious pre- 
ceptor, the highest grade of moral and scholastic culture, but for 
him chosen to fill the humble walks of life, the plainest elements 
of knowledge. 

Human equality was first promulgated by the Redeemer of 
men, in a spiritual sense, and by Thomas Jefferson, in the 
Declaration of Independence, as the deduction of the thought of 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries^' in an ethical and 
philosophical sense ; yet contradistinguished from a natural and 
political sense. For no man of the keen sagacity, and intuition of 
the Virginia statesman would have been willing to stultify himself 
in the eyes of the scientific and philosophical world by asserting 
what his unclouded reason must have assured him was untrue, viz ; 
That all men are created equal ; as he could not but see that all 
men are created unequal, intellectually, physically and politically. 
The Hyder Alls and Pontiacs of their times are born unequal to 
any of their subjects ; and though devoid of all save nature's 
education, exert a political power that their innate superiority 
alone accord them. Could it be proven that the author of the 
declaration meant to teach the entire equality of men, he would 
forever stand in the light of reason and common sense, as the 
purest demagogue that ever attempted to delude mankind. Such 
a conclusion is not, however, to be assumed, without the clearest 
evidence to sustain it. iTatural and political inequality obtains 
amongst all men, because of the original endowment of creation ; 
and it does not disappear in a representative republican govern- 
ment, when it is abstractly said, that all men are born equal. 
Democratic equality is purely speculative, and brings to the great 
body of the people no greater power than the same class enjoy 
imder a monarchy. Power in an inertial condition, inheres, it is 
true, in the mass of society, but like the human body, It is ever 
exerted by the head of the body politic, those possessing the capacity 

'■Speech of R. M. T. Hunter, at the University of Virginia, on the 30th 
of June, 1865, p. 16. 



S73 A REVIEW OF THE 

to direct tlie social organism. It is so in all society, monarchical, 
aristocratical and democratical ; and this was as clearly seen by 
Aristotle, the philosopher, over two thousand years ago, as at the 
present day. But for the men whose thought controls commu- 
nities, eternal anarchy would reign. Political power is simply 
the effort of intellect directing society ; and a few thinkers per- 
form the task in every subdivision of government. The very 
superior minds control the aggregated whole of society, and the 
body of voters exert no more authority than the same number in 
the purest despotism of Asia. All the people can have, is the 
liberty for each individual to iill up and enjoy the full measure 
of his being. Good government does not depend, therefore, 
upon the general intelligence of the masses, but upon the supe- 
rior intellect, culture and virtue of the few, who are by nature 
fitted for rulers. 

The first successful effort of the abolitionized North, inde- 
pendent of the cultured South, to select a President, had resulted 
in a concession to the equalizing ideas of that section. Instead 
of an erudite, high-toned and honorable scholar, a tricky, jocular, 
village politician of mediocre capacity, was chosen to fill the seat 
that the most eminent citizens and educated Statesmen alone had 
heretofore graced. A boorish President was acceptable to parti- 
sans, who believed in the full equality of all men ; and, although 
men are necessitated to qualify themselves for the ordinary avo- 
cations of life, a rail-splitter and flat boatman was deemed equally 
as competent for President of the United States, as the most 
acute logician and finished Statesman. Indeed, it may be 
averred, as a political axiom, that modern fanaticism can neither 
produce nor secure the services of a Statesman of Hamiltonian 
or Websterian calibre. This declaration finds support, wlicn 
reference is made to the class of men elevated by the revolu- 
tionary party to Congress, and to other governmental trusts. 
Charles J. Ingersoll, a modern thinker, says : 

'* "We know, and only a great public change can account for it, that in 
the Revolution of 1776, a country of some three millions of people pro- 
duced illustrious men ; and in that of 1860 the same country, ten times as 
populous, did not produce one." * 

The unnatural, equalizing tendency of the Republican party, 
having originally secured a President of ordinary ability and low 

* Fears for Democracy, p. 121-3. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. 379 

tastes, and a Congress likewise of nearly the same grade ; it was 
not to be expected that higher aspirations would guide the party 
in 1864 ; inasmuch as the whole social structm^e was in a condi- 
tion of turbulence and revolution. But, common and revolu- 
tionary as Abraham Lincoln had exhibited himself during his 
administration, he yet lacked some of the qualities that were 
considered at that time desirable to be possessed by the President 
of the United States. He did not have the lightning celerity of 
movement, and that utter disregard of the whole spirit of the . 
Constitution which the radicals desired. His common sense 
assured him that too great haste spoils the worh / and he waited 
to see the currents of opinion, before too clearly disclosing his 
own views. The radicalism of the President was intense, in the 
highest degree ; but he caused it to be temj^ered with a greater 
degree of caution than the extreme revolutionists desired. 

In pursuance of a movement inaugurated, in the winter of 
1863-4, a convention of extreme radicals, who were opposed to 
the re-nomination of Abraham Lincoln, for President, met at 
Cleveland, May 31st, 1864 ; and after the adoption of a platform 
of principles, named John C. Fremont, as their candidate for the 
Presidential Chair. .And in order, the more fully, to place them- 
selves, in direct opposition to the President's policy, they an- 
nounced the doctrine, that the reconstruction of the Southern 
States, was a question for the consideration of Congress, rather 
than the Federal Executive. The extreme revolutionary charac- 
ter, of the sentiments of the members of this convention, was 
also displayed in the endorsement of the principle of confiscatino- 
the lands of the rebels, regardless of law and the express words 
of the Constitution. In this convention, Thaddeus Stevens 
Charles Sumner, and men of their revolutionary principles, if true 
men, should have been found, either in person, or by letters. 
Being deceivers however, they waited the assembling of another 
convention, which feared to avow, what its real leaders intended 
to carry into execution. 

Great numbers of the radicals, no doubt, strongly sympathized 
with the Cleveland convention movement ; and wished it success 
but were too timid, openly to commit themselves to it. They 
altogether doubted that it could accomplish any potent result 
inasmuch as the popular current in the Republican party seemed 
too strong in favor of Abraham Lincoln to be diverted from him 



380 A REVIEW OF THE 

by any effort that could be made. They surmised correctly, for 
the Cleveland Convention scarcely produced more than a passing 
ripple upon the surface. The President had a large army of 
subordinates, who were all interested in his re-nomination ; and 
besides his skillful knowledge of the politician's art had enabled 
him to appear before the country as the man of all others, who 
was believed to be fitted to carry his party onwards to victory. 
His own remark, that it is never safe to change horses in crossing 
a stream, served to coin an impress upon the public mind that 
was now craftily utilized by him. 

The Republican politicians assembled at Baltimore, June 7th, 
1864, to make Presidential nominations for their party, and 
amongst these Thaddeus Stevens appeared as a delegate to the 
convention. And, in order to appear consistent before the 
country, in view of the contemplated plan of reconstruction, 
which was now the kernel of radical policy, Mr. Stevens strove 
to the utmost of his power to exclude all delegates to the con- 
vention from any of the rebel States. " He declared that he 
had never recognized Yirginia as -being in the Union, since she 
passed the Ordinance of Secession ; and the applause which had 
greeted the delegates from those States that had spoken in the 
convention to-day, was to him a more dangerous element than 
armed rebels in the field."* In spite of the commoner's pro- 
test, the delegates from Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas, were 
admitted to seats in the convention, and accredited the full priv- 
ileges of members from other States. 

The Republican represe^itatives in the Baltimore Convention, 
announced their platform as demanding the unconditional aband- 
onment of all resistance to the Government, without any tender 
of compromise, and that slavery should no longer be tolerated by 
the Federal authorities as an institution of the country ; the 
•Emancipation Proclamation of the President, and the employ- 
ment of African soldiers were also approved by the party leaders. 
An amendment to the Constitution was likewise recommended, 
BO ?s finally to put an end to slavery in all of the States. But 
althouo-h President Lincoln had made the subject of reconstruc- 
tion, the capital topic of his message in December, 18GS, and, 
although his plan was already scouted and derided by a large 
section of his party, a cowardly hypocritical silence was main- 

*New York World, June 8th, 1864. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 8S1 

tained upon this most important point. This was the cardinal 
question of the time, whicli underlay all others, and which tread- 
ing close on the heels of military success, was first in the order 
of importance. It especially deserved to be unfolded by honest 
men, who desire nothing but the advancement of justice. The 
truth, however, was that the Republicans were so divided on this 
• subject, that any attempt to define a policy would have cleft the 
party asunder, and fixed a great gulph between the two seg- 
ments, the warm adherents of Lincoln, and the Stevens and 
Sumner extremists. 

The nomination of Abraham Lincoln, as Robert Breckenridjre, 
the temporary Chairman of the Baltimore Convention substan- 
tially expressed . it, was ^me fait accomjM, even before the 
assembling of that body. It simply registered the paKy determi- 
nation, as it had generally been arranged and understood through- 
out the ISTorth ; inasmuch as no other candidate could be substi- 
tuted, who would so heartily unite all classes of Republicans in 
his support. Being a man of no positive ideas, he could permit 
his opinions to be shaped to suit the popular gale. He, there- 
fore, admirably suited as the Presidential foot-ball to be played 
by the revolutionists, who could propel him in whatever direction 
they chose. A man of fixed principles was by no means a 
suitable instrument of the existing emergency. Besides, Abra- 
ham Lincoln had the sobriquet of '■'' honesV '^ appended to his 
name, which was well calculated to catch the unthinking herd of 
voters. 

The nomination of a candidate for Yice-President, was a mat- 
ter that likewise called for shrewdness at the hands of the Re- 
publican managers in the Baltimore Convention. Three men 
of early democratic faith — Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, Han- 
nibal Hamlin, of Maine, and Daniel S. Dickinson, of l^ew York 
— were the prominent candidates for this position. The first 
named of these received the endorsement of the convention, in 
the face of the protest of Thaddeus Stevens, who saw in the 

*Dr. Orestes Brownson, the clear-headed thinker and philosopher, him- 
self a member of the Republican party, had the sagacity to perceive 
what the title of " honest" in American politics indicates. In a speech 
made by him, June 2Tth, 1864, he i-emarked that he had no confidence in 
any man wlio had the appendage of "honest''' to hi.'^ name, as he will in- 
variably be found to be '"a cunning man, a canny man, a foxy man." 
He also added, " There is not a more cunning man in this country than 
Abraham Lincoln." — New York World, June 2Sth, 1864. 



883 A REVIEW OF THE 

nomination of this candidate a stab at his favorite tlieory of re- 
construction. But the valuable services to the cause of aboli- 
tionism, rendered by the Military Governor of Tennessee, could 
not be overlooked by party manipulators, who more highly 
prized the ignoble surrender of life cherished principles than the 
manly performance of honorable duty. This nomination was 
but in keeping with the promotion of Callicott* and others of 
like antecedents, who were rewarded in proportion to the low 
obeisance they had made to the corrupt beast of infamy that had 
been set up for universal homage. 

The selection of rulers by universal suffrage, to govern man- 
kind, is a republican process. It is the result of modern thought, 
in opposition to the piinciples of monarchy ; and designed to 
bestow upon all classes of men as large an amount of liberty and 
power as may be compatible with moral and governmental in- 
tegrity. Philosophical reflection, in its desire for the elevation 
of general humanity, up to the period of the French revolution, 
liad concurred in the justice of the effort to equalize men as 
much as possible in their social and political relations. The boil- 
ing, however, of the French caldron, upset the hopes of many- 
calm European thinkers in the capacity of man for self-govern- 
ment; and from that period absolutism in the old world has 
been surrounding itself with strong barriers, so as to prevent 
further outbreaks of incendiary madness and lawless revolution. 

But the Federal Union was the product of mod:rn thono-htj as 
it was molded prior to the French revolution. This Conf ederacv 
having been early grasped from the hands of the monarchical 
faction, that for a time controlled it ; under the administrations 
of wise rulers it was rendered the model republic of both the 
ancient and modern world. The extraordinary jDrosperity which 
it enjoyed under the principles of Democracy, was because wis- 
dom kept in harmony the complicated machinery of the whole 
system, based upon tacit, universal consent. During all this 
time, the turbulent, lawless and fanatical elements of societv 
were kept in due subordination by that succession of wise and 
eminent Statesmen who stepped to the helm of Government in 
1800, and held the ship steady for sixty years. But the violent 



* Salmon P. Chase appointed ex-Speaker Callicott to official position 
little doubt in consideration of his base desertion of democratic princi- 
ples. — New York World, April 2Wi, 1864, ^ 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 883 

rocking of the vessel began almost instantaneously to sliow itself 
with the departure of the great helmsmen, Clay, Webster and 
Calhoun. The false doctrine of equality had become so impressed 
upon the poj)ular mind, that with the retirement of these dis- 
tinguished Statesmen, nearly every newspaper reader conceived 
himself as equally competent to rule the nation as the elected 
representatives of the people. Free schools in the iTorth had 
done their fancied work ; they had educated a nation of States- 
men ; and the millennial days of freedom were yet in store for 
the republic 

With such thoughts, the Korthern people having originally 
elevated Abraham Lincoln to the Presidencj'', not because of his 
intellectual superiority, but because of liis representing the ruling 
sentiments of his section ; it was uot to be expected that another 
than he or his like, would be the Presidential nominee of the 
Kapublican party in 1864. Reason had be3n discomiite 1 in the 
election of 1860, and being fully dethroned, was in banishment 
in 1864. Popular election being the mode during pacific times, 
which wise men in State and Federal compacts had agreed upon 
for the choice of rulers, to whom the reins of power were to be 
entrusted, would this same method promote liberty and equity 
when these Constitutions were overthrown, and a period of dis- 
order had seized the country ? 

Such was the condition of affairs, when Lincoln and Johnson 
were nominated at Baltimore, as candidates for President and 
Vice-President of the United States. Republican success in 1860, 
was due to the political prostitution of former Whig and Demo- 
cratic leaders to the abolitionized sentiments of the North, already 
pregnant with revolution and constitutional downfall. But as 
the pretended foes of slavery extension, and the courtiers of 
popular opinions, had been exalted to high seats in the temr)le of 
Mammon, was it probable thit in 1861, they would abandon 
their seats, after having caused hundreds of thousands of 
deluded soldiers to be drowned in seas of blood and carnage, 
to sustain the non-compromise policy of knaves and madmen. 
Again, the party that had grasped power in 1860, under 
the watchwords of economy and reform, was now necessi- 
tated to defend, not the annual expenditure of seventy mil- 
lions of dollars for the support of the Government, but of 
one thousand millions. Delightful economists and reformers in 



884 A REVIEW OF THE 

truth ! The party also, that had through the thousands of utter- 
ances of its leaders, proclaimed that no danger was to be appre- 
hended from the secession of the Sonthern States, was now 
compelled to face an unsubdued rebellion of near four years 
duration. And the men who came into power vituperating and 
vilifying Democratic Administrations as having been dishonestly 
conducted, were since their advent to place, busily engaged in 
rearing a pagoda of fraud, iniquity and corruption, such as the 
civilized world had never before contemplated. 

The Eepublican party, although boasting itself of its Christian 
designs and moral purposes, was the great destroyer of principle 
amongst the American people. Its organization rested upon 
the perversion of man's moral nature, the basis of which is 
truth. Its secret, but unavowed objects, had attracted to its 
folds, the infidel clergy and statesmen of the Korth, whose 
numbers are legion and whose God is humanity. The party from 
its orio-in, was the emboa.iment of conscious untruth in pretend- 
ino- that its only object war. to prevent the extension of slavery 
into free territory ; whereas, from ita organization, it aimed at 
the complete extirpation of the institution, even where it had a 
constitutional existence. The personal liberty bills also had been 
enacted upon the pretence that these were for the protection of the 
citizens of the free States ; yet, the sole object of these, though 
violating the Constitution, was to prevent the return of fugitive 
slaves. During the war again, the Republican party pretended 
to regard the emancipation of the slaves as a military necessity, 
when in truth it only meant to take advantage of th<^ war to 
accomplish its original object. It also pretended to regard 
Dei^ocrats as traitors ; but this was assumed simply to render 
them odious, and drive them from power. This method of ostra- 
cism, proved indeed a valuable aid to the revolutionists. During 
the whole war, indeed, falsehood colored the utterances of the 
Republican press, so as to delude the people concerning the pro- 
gress and movements of tl;e national arms. Oaths were not 
bindino- upon the consciences of the President, Cabinet Ministers, 
Senators or Congressmen, who subscribed to a higher law than 
the Constitution. Plighted faith was no longer required to be 
observed, according to the principles of those who sought by all 
means the eradication of the hated Southern institution. From 
the head of the nation, therefore, to the lowest party subaltern, 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 385 

almost, deception and fraud were employed to further the cause 
for which war had been made against the South. These and 
other influences necessarily germinated the festering corruption 
and demoralization, that arose all over the J^orth in gigantic 
forms, after the installation of the Republican party ; and which 
threatened to bury humanity in a night of universal gloom. 

But the deluge had come ; the foundations of the great deep 
of society were broken up, and coustitutional ruin and prostration 
were everywhere visible. The anarchical mob of the North was 
ruling the nation, both in the Cabinet and upon the field. The 
Baltimore Convention was its selection, and the candidates its 
choice. Law, liberty and order were subordinated to the dictates 
of fanatical propagandism and revolutionary freedom. And it 
even militated nothing adversely to Abraham Lincoln, the favor- 
ite of the social dregs, that he had the courage at length to avow 
his infamous conduct in violating the Federal Constitution. In 
his letter of April 6th, 1864, to Colonel Hodges, he said : 

*' I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become law- 
ful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, 
through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I a isumed this 
ground, and now avow it." 

Society being at this time, in a condition almost of chaotic 
anarchy and tumultuous disorder, public opinion was no fair 
index of the intelligent reflection of the reasoning classes, who 
must always guide the ship of government, or ruin invariably 
ensues. And as occurred in the French revolution, in the change 
of attitude by Mirabeau, La Fayette and others, the thoughtful 
men of the North, who could descry the maelstrom of social 
overthrow that the vessel of State was- approaching, left (as 
before remarked) the Republican party in considerable numbers, 
after the commencement of the war ; but for every one of this 
character that deserted the organization of fanaticism, two of an 
opposite kind came to it from the Democracy, now likewise 
become imbued with the spirit of revolution. A bitter partisan 
press was all the time fanning the flames of hatred against the 
South, and urging onwards the Northern armies to finish the 
work of destruction in which they were engaged. The anti-war 
Democrats were pointed out as sympathisers with the Southern 
rebels, who were drenching the fields of the Republic in the best 
blood of its citizens, patriotically fighting in defence of the life 



286 A REVIEW OF THE 

©f the nation. The unreflecting democrat, whose son had fallen 
at Chancellorsville or Getttysburg,. was stirred to rage when told 
that his party friends were opposed to the war against the peo- 
ple's eneniiesv He conld not see that it was the wicked refusal 
of the Kepublican leaders to compromise the difiiculties with the 
Southern people, which had impelled the sections into deadly 
conflict, and the same which had prolonged it, and flooded the 
land with blood. 

In tills state o-f sentiment, there existed but little probability 
that the Democrats could do more than protest against the acts 
and policy of the Administration party. But that they should 
resist, was in the nature of things ; for do not all oppose those 
injuring them, if they have the power to do so I The Democratic 
party perceived that war was anti-republican and suicidal to the 
principles of free government ; and they should have been false 
to the instincts of humanity not to have expressed their disap- 
probation of a further prosecution of the war. Accordingly, on 
the 29th of August, 1864, the ISTational Convention of this party 
assembled in Chicago, and resolved in favor of a cessation of 
hostilities, in order that peace and the Union might ultimately be 
restored by pacific remedies. And as the dictate of reason and 
true republican sentiment, tliis resolution must ever stand justi- 
fied before the world and the intelligence of coming ages. 

The large majority of the members of this convention, were 
decided peace men, and made but little concealment of their 
views. But a portion of the delegates viewed the platform as 
entirely too strong a committal in favor of peace ; and to coun- 
terbalance this, they insisted upon the expediency of nominating 
a war Democrat, as the party candidate for the Presidency. The 
name of General George B. McClellan was presented to the con- 
A^ention, amidst great applause ; and being known to be very 
popular with the masses of the party, he received the nomina- 
tion. This candidate was, however, by no means the choice of 
the avowed peace men, and was accepted by them with considerable 
reluctance. Could the reverse of that have been expected, when 
the peninsular hero's participation in the illegal arrest of the 
Maryland Legislature was as yet unforgotten. George H. Pen- 
dleton, a peace man, was settled by this convention as the Demo- 
cratic candidate for Yice-President. 

General McClellan'a letter of acceptance had the effect of 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 387 

deadening Democratic enthusiasm in his support. The military 
chieftain carried his martial autocracy with him in his letter 
accepting the nomination ; and laid down an interpretation of 
the platform of his party which was agreeable to himself. But 
his letter evinced a base truckling to the corrupted war sentiment 
of the ]N"orth ; and the party should at once have repudiated him 
as its nominee, and selected a true representative of Democratic 
principles, who could have aroused Avarm enthusiasm in his sup- 
port. There were indeed mutterings heard ; but the Democracy 
had become too far demoralized under the guidance of selfish 
leaders to be capable of bold action. There were yet Spartan 
bands in its ranks in abundance, but competent leaders were 
wanting to unite and lead them to victory, or even honorable 
defeat. 

But even the apparent united array of the old party, that had 
so long borne victory upon its banners, was terrifying to the 
enemy. A closing up of ranks was at once ordered. Fremont 
and his retiring followers deemed it also prudential to return to 
the fold in order that fanaticism united, might be able to grapple 
with the common foe. The campaign was short and spirited 
upon one side alone. Genuine enthusiasm was lacking in the 
breasts of the Anti-war Democracy. The candidate was tar- 
nished in the eyes of true men, having fought the battles of the 
wicked despotism that was overthrowing the liberties of the 
country. 

The Republican leaders, on the contrary, were buoyant with en- 
thusiasm in anticipation of the victory of might over right. The 
legions of infidelity, malice and rapine, were moving their serried 
columns to the battle that was to crown them victors over equity and 
plighted compact. The spirit of intuition appeared to the Demo- 
cratic freemen of the North, and audibly whispered in their tents, 
before the onset began, " I will meet the at PMllippiP On 
November 8th, 1864, the battle was fought, and constitutionalism 
was prostrated upon the Western continent. 

Abraham Lincoln was again elected President, carrying the 
electoral vote of every State considered in the Union, except 
three — New Jersey, Delaware and Kentuckyr Over four hun- 
dred thousand of a popular majority endorsed his election. The 
anarchical mob-spirit of the North had again triumphed over 
reason and reflection ; and the party, which was regardless of 



388 A REVIEW OF THE 

law and order, had anew seized the hehn of Government. The 
exhausted youth of the South, now alone stayed the oppressor's 
advance. Should their resistance at length be fully overcome, 
the Juggernaut of Northern incendiary fanaticism, would then 
roll its hideous figure over the prostrate form of constitutional 
government. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 380 



CHAPTER XXIV 



FANATICISM TRIUMPHS. 



The tide of warfare and invasion still continued to swell, and 
was rapidly submerging in a sea of blood, section after section of 
the Southern States. The available military strength from the 
old Dominion to Texas, had been conscripted to repel the hated 
Yankee invaders ; the chiv^alric armies of defense were greatly 
reduced in numbers, and still further melting away in daily colli- 
sions with the enemy ; and no avenues now remained open that 
promised replenishment to the i-apidly exhausting Confederacy- 
The spirit and courage that had shown themselves upon a hun- 
dred battle-fields were yet unconquered, but the rolling waves of 
fresh levies from the Korth were advancing with steady move, and 
promised to prostrate in a general overthrow the still struggling 
remnants of the Southern armies. Cut off from the outside 
world, the Confederate defensive strength must alone be raised 
upon their own soil, and their armies replenished from their own 
citizens. 

The American sectional struggle, being the commencement 
upon the Western Continent of the great battle of Communism 
with capital and stable government, the Red Republicans of the 
old world lent all their influence to the cause of the revolution- 
ists, throwing their weight into the abolition scale by enlisting 
themselves in tens of thousands in the Northern armies. Europe 
imported its exuberant sans culotU population upon our shores ; 
fanaticism turned the negro slaves of the South into conscripting 
fields; and from these two sources, the Northern military strength 
in a large measure was steadily replenished. But the conquest 
of the Southern rebels had not taken place in sixty days, as had 
been promised. The negroes of the South now proved a valua- 
ble reserve, upon which the war party of the Korth could fall 
back, and red republicanism also arose in demand to assist in the 



890 A REVIEW OF THE 

completion of the work that had at first been sneered at as a 
matter of insignificance. 

That abolitionism and communism should have united in our 
sectional struggle, was altogether natural, inasmuch as they had 
like aspirations, being sisters of a common patronage. Both 
followed the movement of modern free thought, which for ages 
had desired to reach in governmental spheres, the practical equali- 
zation of humanity. To strive, however, for full human equality 
was to endeavor to remove what the inscrutable wisdom of Diety, 
for certain reasons, had implanted in nature. And those who 
did so, influenced by logical reasoning, were they for the most 
part, who were unwilling to recognize the existence of a Supreme 
Creator and ruler of men ; and their desire was to remo^^e all the 
inequalities, which the creative mind had left upon the face of 
universal being. They were those who officiously set themselv^es 
up as wiser than the Divine Lawgiver, and as competent to rec- 
tify the work of His hands. 

Freedom itself has been the conception of the philosophical 
thought of the world ; and an attribute of those alone who have 
been able to comprehend and enjoy it. It has been the birth- 
right of the few in all ages and countries ; and so will it ever 
remain. The great mass of mankind are born either tyrants or 
slaves, both being endowed with like characteristics. For the 
slave becomes the most unrelenting task-master, when circum- 
stances have elevated him from his former menial condition ; 
and the tyrant, in turn, readily sinks to a state of servitude, 
when reverses of fortune have overtaken him. It is only he 
whom nature has endowed v/ith the principles of freedom, who 
stubbornly resists the condition of slavery, in • which his birth 
may have placed him ; and who makes incessant effort to relieve 
himself from the chains of bondage. The great bulk of man- 
kind do not realize the bondage of their creation ; and hence 
thay make no effective effort to relieve themselves from it. 
Freedom does not consist in being relieved from the necessity of 
manual labor, but in the right to think, speak and act as a moral 
intelligence. Esop and Epictetus, the philosophers, were free 
men, though occupying the condition of slavery. He alone is a 
free man, whom his moral and intellectual qualities make free. 
And he is one, again, who only asks from others what he would 
be willing to extend were circumstances changed ; but seeing the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 391 

inequality implanted upon the face of creation, wisdom admon- 
ishes him to permit the laws of destiny to remain unquestioned 
as thej are fixed. 

Free government, likewise being the product of philosophical 
thought, has hitherto sunk, because too large a proportion of 
mankind have ever permitted themselves to be made the shaves 
of designing tyrants, who care alone for their own promotion 
and success. The .ancient Republics of Greece and Kome disap- 
peared, because their freemen were too few in numbers to defend 
them a,gainst the natural foes of their existence. Centralization, 
the antipodal force to freedom, from the origin of governi;^en't, 
has been active and has alwa,ys succeeded in submerging free 
institutions in the abyss of des2X>tism, During the middle ages, 
also, the Teutonic intellect succeeded in establishing free repub- 
lics and an enlargement of freedom in different pai'ts of Europe ; 
but all thesp were overthrown in the centralizing movements 
that reared absolute monarchies in France, Spain, England and 
elsewhere, about the close of the fifteenth century. The tyrants 
pretended to enlarge the liberties of the lower classes, in order' 
to entice them to their support ; and by means of the aid thus 
obtained they were enabled to prostrate freedom in one common 
ruin, and ride in triumph over those whose services they had so 
treacherously subsidized. 

And in the alliance between abolitionism and the communistic 
element of Europe, free government in the Western world was 
again assailed by enemies who appeared in the habiliments of Con- 
federates. These foes stood forth as the friends of freedom and 
universal humanity; and professed the most sincere love for 
America and her institutions. The attitude, however, which 
these assumed, clearly demonstrated that their zeal outstripping 
their wisdom, rendered them like Matthison and John of Leyden, 
the enemies of social order and constitutional law; and that their 
efforts to extend freedom beyond its natural limits, would in the 
end turn out to be labor in vain and purely abortiva And worse 
than this would follow, as it was perceived, that these super- 
serviceable efforts would prove the suicidal, and destroy even 
liberty of those worthy of it ; and as had happened in other 
ages, aid in centralizing all the power of the government, and 
ultimately lead to the establishment of an empire where the peace- 
ful and prosperous Republic of America had flourished. 



Zd2 A REVIEW OF THE 

A tendency to ccntralizatian, as before observed, had existed 
from the origin of the Federal Union ; and it was one, which of 
all others, distinguished the Federal party and its successors from 
their opponent, through all the periods of our history. Against 
this trait of Federalism, the Democratic party early arrayed 
itself, and steadfastly adhered to this position ; and, although it 
was the party of the humble classes, and the one wliich might 
have been supposed most likely to sympathize in all efforts to 
elevate mankind ; yet comprising in its ranks a body of philosoph- 
ical thinkers, whom principle alone detained, it was not strange 
that it ever remained the Constitutional party of the country, 
whit'li was opposed to all useless aims of fanatical zeal. The 
Democratic party was indeed, from its origin, the exponent of 
the most enlarged freedom of which men are capable. It was 
the one that made our country the home of the oppressed of all 
nations, and which strove by means of constitutional law to 
afford them all the means by which they might uninterruptedly 
work out their own destiny. It, however, never accepted the 
theory of the universal equality of all races of men. But Cau- 
casian equality, in a certain sense, having been the established 
theory upon which the government was framed, this was accepted 
as the embodiment of the largest practical liberty that was attain- 
able. The Democratic was, therefore, simply the Constitutional 
parly of the nation. 

Having been such, then, rather than a sans culotte Democracy ^ 
v/hich its name might have implied; when the fanatical and rev- 
olutionary element of the country had developed itself to strength, 
and, like the tyrants of Europe, sought to subvert the funda- 
mental theory of government, under the hypocritical cry of 
universal Democracy, it was natural that the party of Jefferson 
should stand by the constitutional institutions of the Republic. 
It thus exhibited itsolf as consistent with its early record, and 
opposed to the destructive principles of fanaticism and com- 
munism ; both of which ever lie in wait for the overthrow of all 
established government when an opportunity presents itself. 
The uneasy, agitating and revolutionary elements of Europe, 
led by Victor Hugo, Garibaldi, and others of like character, were 
very naturally, therefore, in sympathetic accord with American 
fanaticism. The British Eed Eepublican classes were so grati- 
fied with the re-election of Abraham Lincoln, that a large body 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 393 

of tliem in a letter, promptly congratulated the successful can- 
didate upon his political success. 

Fanaticism in America, fortified as it was, therefore, in the 
affections of the unreflecting millions of Europe, was a force of 
nearly invincible power. It is ever such in its nature, being 
propelled by the emotions rather than by the reason of mankind. 
What else furnished the crusaders the material, that j^rolonged 
for centuries their struggles for the conquest of the holy land I 
The thirty years' war of Germany was inspiritea by that ever 
living principle of the human breast ; and the blood that flowed 
on Saint Bartholomew's night, and which moistened the soil of 
Prance, Spain and the Netherlands for ages, was siied by this 
active enemy of human repose. Did not, indeed, leading Abo- 
litionists openly declare that nothing could justify the flooding 
of American fields with crimson gore, except the principle which 
had produced the war ? And what was that principle, as they 
themselves confessed it, but that urging of the equality of 
all mankind ? In behalf of this, then, European and American 
fanatics were united. This union could not, therefore, be but 
almost omnipotent and resistless. 

Fanaticism was the ruling force during the middle ages, and 
down to the peace of Westphalia. But philosophic reason rose 
to the helm about this period. The principles of Des Cartes and 
Bacon, taught men that when two religious parties of antago- 
nistic principles live in the same country, it is the dictate of wis- 
dom, that the one do yield to the other, so far as that they can 
live together in peace, rather than in a state of perpetual war- 
fare. It was perceived that conquering a people does not lead 
to the change of their opmions, but rather intensifies them in 
their former notions. Fanatical and religious wars disappeared 
as the consequence of such views, from the face of Europe; and 
the adjudication of questions of this nature, was remitted to the 
forum of reason and sound iudgment. The peace of Munster 
inaugurated in government the era of religious .oleration. 
Compromise, from this period, settled what before had been re- 
ferred to the arbitrament of arms. 

But as Christianity, the religion of peace, haa been perverted 
by fanaticism into one of enthusiastic zeal and bloodshed, so was 
tiie philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
changed by the like influence into revolution and governmental 



394 k REVIEW OP THE 

rnin. Tlie same classes of men who, Tipori the religious arena, 
had converted the divine love of the master into bloody fervor, 
novs?^ entered the department of social life, and corrupted the 
princij)les of pure thought in the furnace of the French revolu- 
tion. Excessive zeal and fanatical ardor, threatened during this 
eventful period, to overturn all sound government in an abyss of 
social destruction ; and it was simply owing to the sagacious wis- 
dom of European Statesmen, that the current of fanaticism, now 
found in the new channel, was able to be successfully stemmed. 
The stream of fury, crime and madness was at length stopped, 
but numerous lessons were written by the hand of destiny for 
the edification of future ages. 

Fanaticism ever perfoims acts of kindred character. Doing 
the bidding of emotion, it never consults reason, and hence its 
work is hastily and imperfectly executed. Being the quality of 
feminine minds, it moves without the guidance of reflective 
thought, which is needed to direct human action. American ab- 
olitionism being of like quality with other fanaticisms, its move- 
ments in the war against the South must likewise be similar. 
And so indeed did it show itself. Having refused all tenders of 
amicable settlement and compromise between the sections, before 
the outbreak of hostilities, it was not to be supposed these pa- 
cific modes would be embraced after the demon of battle had lit 
up the flames of sectional strife. Death must continue his work 
of destruction, or the zeal of the invaders would not be satisfied. 
Instead of terms of adjustment being considered, the c<ir of rev- 
olution pressed onwards to its final goal, 

Sherman's invading hosts, by means of fire and sword, cut 
their way through South Carolina and Georgia ; and Columbia, 
the capitol of the Spai'tan State of the Southern Confederacy, 
sunk amidst the ora eking of hostile flames and the bombs of 
Northern artillerists. The shade of the brave Count Pulaski, 
from his honored monumental summit in the City of Savannah, 
was next compelled to view the old flag of the Republic, carried 
as a t^despot's banner, for which ignoble service the heroic Pole, 
in his devotions to constitutional liberty, had never consecrated it. 
Torn up railroads, burnt bridges, and plundered residences, 
marked the path of General Stoneman and his followers through 
South-western Virginia and Western ]N"orth Carolina. Alabama 
and Y/cstern Georgia received rude experience in the severities 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 895 

of war. Captured cities and tlie remains of burned locomotives, 
cars and cotton, attested the presence of Wilson and his raiders. 
The beautiful and fertile valley of the Shenandoah, meandered 
by the river of its own name, was made memorable in modern 
warfare, because of the fiendish and Attilla-like destruction of 
property by General Sheridan and his devastating soldiery. The 
flouring mills and barns * of this large valley district of Yirginia 
were consumed in the flames of Federal atrocity, an act of bar- 
barity that finds no parallel in the annals of civilized war. And 
upon the flimsy pretext that a J^orthern engineer had been killed 
by some unknown rebel, the Federal Haynau confesses that " all 
the houses, within an area of five miles, were burned." f 
Destruction and desolation spread their ravages in all directions, 
as the armies of the North meandered in tortuous courses, 
through the barren fields of the South; and the black and 
smoking ruins that marked the invaders paths, presented sad 
evidence of the love that held together in fraternal union the 
Northern and Southern people. 

Whilst the blows which fanaticism dealt, were falling thick 
and fast upon the Southern Confederacy ; and whilst its walls 
already breached, upon all sides, were showing unmistakable 
signs of yielding to the assaults of the enemy, the valleys began 
to resound with shouts of joy for the nearly grasped victory. 
The mask that had so long been worn to conceal the object of 
the war, was now laid aside by the boldest of the radical leaders. 
George W. Julian, a Member of Congress from Indiana, in his 
speech of February 8th, 1865, boldly avowed that the designs of 
his party never contemplated anything further in their war for 



* General Sheridan reported the destruction effected by his soldiers, as 
follows : 

" In moving back to this point, the whole country from the Blue Eidge 
to the North Mountain, has been made untenantable for a rebel army. 
I have destroyed over 2,000 barns filled with wheat and hay and farming 
implements, over seventy mills filled with flour and wheat ; have driven 
in front of the army over 4,000 head of stock, and have killed and issued 
to the troops not less than 3,000 sheep. This destruction embraces the 
Luray Valley and Little Fort Valley, as well as the main valley." — 
Greeley's Conflict, Vol. 2, p. 611. 

•f- Horace Greeley, in his History of the American Conflict, Volume 2, 
page 611, speaks as follows of the devastation of the Shenandoah Valley : 

" It is not obvious that the national cause was advanced, or the national 
prestige exalted, by this resort to one of the very harshest and mosc 
questionable expedients, not absolutely forbidden by the laws of civilized 
warfare." 



393 A REVIEW OF THE 

the Union, expect tlieir triumpli for human rights, that is tho 
the emancipation of the negro race, and their elevation to equal, 
social and political rights with the whites. Characterizing the 
conflict as a war of the people, he said : 

"They (the people), expect that Congress will pass a bill for the con- 
fiscation of the fee of rebel landholders, and they expect the President 
will approve it. They expect that Congress will provide for the recon- 
struction of the rebel States, by systematic legislation, which shall 
guarantee republican governments to each of those States, and the com- 
plete enfranchisement of the negro. * * * They expect that 
Congress will provide for parcelling out the forfeited and confiscated 
lands of the rebels in small honaesteads, among the soldiers and seamen 
of the war, as a fit reward for their valor, and a security against the 
ruinous monopoly of the soil in the South." 

In the same speech Mr. Julian even admitted that " the whole 
policy of the Administration had been revolutionized." But 
this was an acknowledgment that would not have been made at 
a much earlier j)eriod. It had been the standing accusation of 
the Anti-war Democrats, but was steadily resented by the men 
themselves who had produced the revolution. JSTow, however, 
when their hold of the Government for the next four years was 
fully established, and when the rebellion eeemed to be nearing 
its close, the men that had hitherto averred, in the most solemn 
language, that the war was alone prosecuted for the defense of 
the Union, could step forward, the success of their ideas being 
assured, and confess their hypocrisy and the deception that had 
been practiced upon the country. 

In the second session of the 3Sth Congress, fanatical hopes were 
buoyant beyond what had before been witnessed. The Presi- 
dential election that crowned the Republican party with victory ; 
and had dispirited, in a corresponding measure, large numbers 
of Democrats who felt that for the time being, their party was 
utterly prostrated. The car of radical destruction had obtained 
such velocity that it seemed to many as labor in vain to attempt 
any longer to resist it. And when Kepresentative Ashley on the 
6th of January, 1865, called up in the House his favorite joint 
resolution to submit to the States, the Constitutional Amendment 
abolishing slavery throughout the Union, several Democrats who, 
in the former session of Congress, had opj)osed the Amendment, 
now co-operated with the Republicans and gave it their support. 
Those who now for the first time supported the measure, had 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 397 

become fully convinced that tliongli violative of the Constitution, 
it would be finally carried ; and that longer resisting it would 
be attended with no beneficial results. And notwithstanding, 
duty to principle and obedience to their oaths, demanded of all 
sincere Democrats, that they defend with their votes the Federal 
Constitution ; and that they allow the responsibility for its vio- 
lation and overthrow to rest upon other shoulders than their own. 
After a heated controversy of three weeks on the floor of the 
House, the joint resolution was adopted by 119 yeas to 56 nays. 
"When this result was announced, fanatical zeal as it ever does, 
burst all the barriers of order, and tilled the Hall of Congress 
with loud and continued demonstrations of joy. One historian, 
himself a Republican, says : " N^ever was such a scene before 
witnessed in any legislative hall."* 

At this session of Congress, the establishment of a Freedmen's 
Bureau was considered. A measure of this character was found 
necessary to be established, when the authority of the Southern 
master had been broken by the Presidential edict ; and the negro 
slaves set adrift as freemen. And the demand for governmental 
protection came from the same classes of the people, who had 
ever claimed for the negro the highest rights ; and that they 
were fully competent to take care of themselves if freedom was 
granted to them. The request for such a bureau came from the 
Freedmen's Aid Societies of Boston, ISTew York, Philadelphia 
and Cincinnati ; ^nd from men who were the most ardent friends 
of emancipation and negro equality. As soon, however, as this 
equality had been proclaimed by the Government, these same 
people instinctively shrunk, as it were, from allowing the negro 
unaided to make his future way through life. They were fully 
conscious that he was incompetent to cope with the superior 
white man in the struggle for existence, much as they had 
boasted of his ability. But their emotional natures, driving them 
without rudder or compass, they had looked to emancipation as 
the long sought haven of hope ; and as soon as this had been 
reached, a gleam of reason seemed to signify to them that 
the freed African was incompetent to retain, if left to him 
self, what he had grasped. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, when 
this matter had been discussed, at the former session of Congress, 

*Barrett's life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 686. 



393 ' A REVIEW OF THE 

tm'iied the argument against the Abolitionists in the following 
words : 

'•Nor need I remind gentlemen, that tliis very difficulty was frequently 
foretold, that the incapacity of the negro to take care of himself, was 
often alluded to, and that you always ridiculed the idea. What will you 
do with the negro when you shall have emancipated him? was fre- 
quently asked ; and as often your virtuous indignation boiled over at the 
bare intimation that he was not thoroughly competent to take care of 
himself."* 

The Freed men's Bureau Bill was the subject of a long and 
heated discussion in both Houses of Congress. It was contended 
bj those ojDposed to the measure, that the Copstitution con- 
ferred no authoritj upon the General Government to establish 
such a bureau of African affairs ; but it was become necessary, 
that stronger arguments should be urged against the passage of a 
bill, than its unconstitutionality. The faction whose aim was 
resisted by that instrument of compact, was not likely to lieed 
arguments drawn from it. This was particularly so now, when 
the revolutionists believed that they were about to triumph in 
the near future over the armed combattants of the South. Some 
of the Republicans of both Houses, besides the Democrats, 
opposed the passage of the Freedmen^s Bureau, as a measure not 
contemplated within the purview of the General Government. 
John P. Hale, of Kew Hampshire, and otJiers, argued that as the 
negro was now freed, he should be left to manage his affairs to 
the best of his ability. The measure, however, passed both the 
Senate and House of Representatives, and having received the 
assent of President Lincoln, became a law March 2d, 1865. 

The act embraced the management of the affairs of freedmeri 
refugees, and abandoned lands in the South. The bureau created 
by it was attached to the War Department ; and its friends, 
doubtless wishing to excite no inquiry as to the expense that 
would be required to sustain it, made no appropriation for carry- 
ing out its purposes. But E. M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, 
exhibited his humble obeisance to his masters ; and greatly en- 
deared himself with them in the service he rendered their pro- 
ject by his illegal action. He assigned army officers to take 
charge of the new bureau's concerns, provided buildings for its 
accommodation, and furnished the supplies required by requisi- 
tions on the Quarter-Master's Departmant. By this method the 

*Spceoh of March 1st, 1861. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 599 

expense needed to sustain the newly created burean, eould not 
easily be known, as the War Department was aUe to cover the 
whole with its ample wings. 

The proceedings of the second session of the Thirty-eighth 
Congress, evinced a spirit of malignity and vindictiveness on the 
part of the revolutionary men who shone cons-picuous in those 
bodies, that even supassed in intensity the worst exhibitions that 
the war fury had as yet produced. Indeed, this spirit in a 
measure animated the breasts of the war patriots from the com- 
mencement of hostilities. Bloody conquest and destruction of 
the Southern people, was the motto imprinted upon the banners 
of the braves, led by the hyena captains of the North, and in- 
spired by the infidel clergy of New England ; the hypocrites 
who pretended to be the followere of the meek and lowly man 
of Nazareth ; but who were simply the exponents of the princi- 
ples of Voltaire, Condorcet and Rousseau, and visionary propa- 
gandists of the murderous creed of the leaders of the French 
revolution. 

Universal extermination of the Southern whites, wholesale 
seizure of their property, and its distribution amongst the eman- 
cipated negro slaves, were the proclaiuied doctrines of Stevens, 
Wade, Sumner, and the other stars of the hrst magitude that 
sparkled in the firmament of fanatical glory. Rather than com- 
promise with traitors, Thaddeus Stevens, early in the war, had 
announced himself as willing " to see the Union shattered into 
ten thousand fragmentsP One revolutionary scheme after 
another had been from the first proposed in Congress by the 
most violent of these men, all designed to destroy the Southern 
whites and elevate barbarians to political equality with them. A 
retroacttve spirit, antipodal to the destructive, during the first 
stages of the war, had the ability to hold the demoniac force in 
more circumscribed bounds than the French Girondists had been 
able to do, in the old world. The spirit was the same, however, 
but no vast American city afforded equal opportunities for its 
development, as existed across the waters. 

The closing session of the Thirty-eighth Congress, supplemented 
former acts of negro elevation, by opening, at last to the new 
American, the privilege of carrying the United States mails. 
This was done at a period when demoralization and corruption, 
had made such inroads into the Republican party, that it was, 



400 A REVIEW OF THE 

perliaps, difficult for the pure government of fanaticism, to find 
enough of loyal whites, of sufficient honesty to perform even 
the menial service of carrying the mails. But, if negro purity 
was even at that time above par, the leaders had unfortunately 
omitted to consult their great Apostle, Jean Jacques Rousseau, 
who would have advised them that the African's morality would 
sink in the proportion as culture was thrust upon him. 

The leading revolutionists, during this session of Congress, 
had a fine opportunity to inflame the minds of the Northern 
unthinking people, by accusing the rebels of cruelty towards 
Federal prisoners of war. It was not at all sincere sympathy 
for the Northern soldiers lying in Southern prisons, that excited 
these complaints, but the desire to intensify Northern hate 
against the rebels, which was the sole food that sustained the 
revolutionary Eepublican party. Genei'ous breasts were equally 
touched with pity for prisoners of war, whether confined in 
JSTorthern or Southern prisons. But the party that had it in 
their power to end the captivity of all the Northern prisoners by 
an exchange for Southern in their possession, and refused to do 
so, could not be supposed to entertain very ardent sympathy for 
their captives languishing in the enemy's custody. At this time, 
the North held twice as large a number of Southern prisoners, as 
the Confederates had in their keeping. Besides, real symj^athetic 
men, would not have spurned the generous tender of Lord 
Wharncliife, a British Nobleman, to mitigate the miseries of 
Federal prison life, as William H. Seward, the representative 
of the Administration, had the audacity to do. 

Retaliation, confiscation and extermination were the current 
watch- words of fanatical feeling ; and no measures of Congress 
received ardent support, save as they approximated the attainment 
of these righteous standards of intemperate zeal. Even the 
patriot daughters, the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, and 
the other charitable agencies of the North, could raise their five 
hundred millions of dollars to support Congress in its unconsti- 
tutional advances ; and to aid in sending the demon of war upon 
his fiendish mission to the South. Another Madame Roland upon 
the American continent might have cried aloud: " ^, Chinsii- 
anity, what cr^imes are committed in thy name !" An infidel 
priesthood had deluded the people into the belief, that the bible 
meant what its words contradicted; and an oligarchy of mad- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 401 

dened enthusiasts, at the dictation of an atheistic Cono-ress, songht 
to canonize the overthrow of constitutional rights as the highest 
attainment of humanitarian effort. Passionate liatred of slave- 
holders was esteemed by all these as the holiest inspirations of 
Divinity. 

The 38th Congress closed its session March 3d, 1SG5, having 
expended their every effort to pour out the full vial of their 
demoniac wrath upon the heads of the Southern people. Meas- 
ui'es of almost every character, were considered to complete the 
work of destruction. The leaders, however, were unable to secure 
the passage of their bill of retaliation, which should permit them 
to inflict vengeance upon the rebel prisoners in their hands, al- 
though the same was pressed for a time with great earnestness. 
Full coniiscation of rebel property, as Mr. Stevens would have 
desired, was also too daring a project to run the gauntlet of 
public criticism in the North. Its pressure was left in abeyance. 
The great question of reconstruction, although considerably de- 
bated, was likewise left for future discussion when fanaticism had 
fully grasped its victory. 

But the tide of war moved onwards, and speedily prostrated 
one embankment of opposition after another. The battle of the 
Five Forks was lost by the Confederates ; and the long and 
heroic defense of Richmond and Petersburg, was ended. The 
Capitol of the resistant States was evacuated, and General Robert 
E. Lee and his depleted army were compelled to surrender them- 
selves prisoners of war to the I^orthern invaders. The sun of 
the Confederacy sunk at Appomattox ; and the night of fanatical 
despotism covered with its mantle the thirty-six States of the 
American Union. 

The old Whig party had been prostrated by fanaticism ; the 
Democracy had been rent and overthrown by it ; and now, after 
four years of the bloodiest strife that civilization had ever contem- 
plated, the united South was forced to lower her standards from 
the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and do repentant homage for 
daring to defend the inherited rights of her people. The Roman 
Republic wa*s buried on the field of Phillij)pi ; American Free 
Government was also gathered to its fathers, in the land of its 
birth, beneath the soil of Virginia. The social cataclysm that 
the founders and friends of the Republic had foreseen and dreaded, 
with pensive awe, had come at last in all its direful reality. 



403 A REVIEW OF THE 

The windows of a wratliful heaven had opened wide upon their 
hinges ; and the foundations of the great deep of constitutional 
liberty were broken up and destroyed. 

Victory, however, had fully perched upon the banners of the 
revolutionists, and their triumphant armies were receiving the 
plaudits of a deluded people. Eivers of blood had been shed, 
and near a million of America's youth had perished in the 
terrific confict of arms which madness had provoked. Besides 
the enormous expenditure of several thousand millions of dollars 
which were required to prosecute a four years' war, a debt of 
almost three thousand millions of dollars, and a large pensionary 
list were entailed as a legacy upon the country, for the henefit of 
coming ages. But the fanatics knew no bounds to their ecstasy, 
when victory finally crowned their banners. The gain was so 
incalculable, in their estimation, that their shouts of applause 
almost rent in twain the whole Northern heavens. They had 
Avrested, without compensation, four millions of negro bondmen 
from the ownership of their Southern masters, and they had 
done nothing more. What was this, however, save the equity 
and justice which robbers exhibit 1 But had they not (as history 
will inquire) also preserved the Union from destruction and dis- 
memberment ? The old Union, the product of mutual consent 
and compromise, needed no defenders before the rise of the 
Abolition j^arty of the North ; and but for this baneful organi- 
zation no defense should have been at all necessary. The free 
government of the Constitution had been metamorphosed into a 
despotism under the name of a Republic. Such is the govern- 
ment which Abolitionists preserved for Americans. And their 
service in behalf of the Union simply resembled, therefore, the 
aid of those generous banditti, who enroll their names as a 
municipal constabulary, to protect the city against their own 
secret robberies. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 403 



CHAPTER XXV, 

THEORIES IN CONFLICT. 

The rebellions armies, after their long and valorous resistance, 
finally stocked their arms in submission to the Federal Adminis- 
tration. Iniquity and crime were now permitted to take their 
seats as conquerors, and dispense justice to their humbled vassals. 
But vengeance, one of the compensating furies of humanity, turned 
her hand and snatched the figure-head of conquest from its ex- 
alted seat, which left a void to be filled by another. The rancor 
of Marat, and the revenge of Charlotte Corday, had crossed the 
ocean, and were again confronting each other. In the moment 
of despair a victim is sacrificed. The American President was 
shot in Ford's Theatre, in the City of Washington, by the furious 
J. Wilkes Booth. The apparent embodiment of the victory, as 
usually happens, rather than of the crimes committed, was the 
one consigned by the fates to the eternal shades. 

But Abraham Lincoln, the representative of the Abolition 
party, was by no means the worst man in its ranks ; and ven- 
geance missed its mark when he was selected to bear into the 
wilderness the sins of fanaticism. The Marat of the revolution 
had escaped, and was still breathing forth slaughter against the 
objects of his venom. But the act of canonization performed 
over the manes of the deceased President, will fail to rescue 
his name from the odium that must ever rest upon it as the 
representative despot who, in violation of his oath, trampled 
upon the Constitution of his country. Saintship in this case was 
too hastily conferred ; and, it is to be feared, that in after years 
the adversary will yet rise and read so long a list of chai-ges, that 
a re-hearing being granted, the verdict of fanaticism may be 
rescinded. Will not the enemy be tempted to cite even the 
place of the assassination, as an unbecoming one, in which saints 
and martyrs should be congregated, when the blood of their 
countrymen was moistening many a battle field. The assassin's 



404 A EEVIEW OF THE 

poniard drank the life-blood of Saint Thomas a'Becket, in a 
spot more holy than the theatre. But Nero is said to have lid- 
died whilst Rome was hnrning^ which was of a piece with visit- 
ing the theatre when death in every shape was stalking the 
land. 

The mantle of the assassinated President fell upon Andrew 
Johnson, the Vice-President, who, after qualifying himself, 
entered upon the discharge of his official functions as the Chief 
Magistrate of the United States, ]\Ir, Johnson was a Southern 
citizen ; and as a Senator in Congress from Tennessee, had re- 
sisted the secession movement of his people with all the ability 
he could command. Even after his State had seceded he re- 
mained firm in his attachment to the Government ; and for so 
doing had been burned in effigy in nearly every village of Ten- 
nessee. Although elected to high positions by his countrymen, no 
cordial sympathy had ever existed between the ruling classes of 
the South and himself. The former viewed him as a sans 
culoUe of ability, who had risen to position without wealth, 
culture or social standing. A natural antagonism, in turn, re- 
pelled him from these ; and allied him in feeling wdth the hum- 
ble classes of his State and of the whole country. And again, 
though a member of the extrej^^.e Southern State Eights party, 
yet having lacked that cultured training needed to produce 
the finished statesman, he never fully accepted the ultimate de- 
ductions of the Jeffersonian and Calhoun theory of constitutional 
construction ; and when secession came, his rejDugnance to the 
slave-holding classes of the South, induced him tO' take his stand 
with the representatives of the General Government, as being 
the surer embodiment of freedom and po^Dular democracy. 

A hurricane of rage and vindictive fury swept over the 
ISTorthern States, as the news of the assassination of Abraham 
Lincoln sped over the telcgrapluc' wires of the country. It M'a& 
the period of the highest intensity of public feeling that had man- 
ifested itself since the announcement of the attack on Fort Sump- 
ter in April, 1861. Freedom of opinion disappeared absolutely for 
a time, and it was expected that a sad melancholy should clothe 
the countenances of all in soitow, for the misfortune that had 
befallen the Union. A philosopher would hardly have expected 
that all should be wrapped in sadness for the death of one who 
had permitted himself to be the leading representative of the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 405 

fanatical classes of the country ; who, in order to carry out their 
wild and chimerical ideas, had overthrown all the embankments 
of constitutional liberty, and flooded in a sea of blood the one- 
half of the States of the Federal Union. A sort of compensa- 
tion, however, always obtains in the affairs of men and nations. 
Such may have happened in this case, in the divine order of 
omnipotence. Fanaticism had triumphed. A check was re- 
quired ; and a subservient President would by no means supply 
the demand. Destiny had selected one of stern material for the 
performance of the service she required. Andrew Johnson, with 
unquailing firmness, had already passed through the furnace of 
opposition, which had steeled him with the courage that enabled 
him to grapple successfully with the boldest assailant he might 
be compelled to encounter. 

But to comfort themselves for the removal of their Presi- 
dent, the Abolitionists pretended to believe that they recog- 
nized the finger of Providence in what had occurred. The kind 
hearted, charitable and humane Abraham Lincoln, as they ef- 
fected to believe him to have been constituted, was not the man 
to dispense full and exact justice to rebels and traitors, who had 
maliciously exerted themselves, to the best of their ability, to 
destroy the Union, and establish a new one with slavery as its 
corner stone. The man who, as Military Governor of Tennessee, 
had shown himself relentless towards traitors, was the one to fill 
the Presidential Chair which the times demanded. Such ex- 
pressions as the following were everywhere current : " The 
traitors have hilled their best friend / Andrew Johnson will 
show no mercy to traitors / Jeffersoru Davis and Hohert E. Lee 
will now swing high on a sour apple tree^ 

. The new President in his expressions and conduct, at first 
gave seekers of blood some verbal assurance that the mantle of 
authority had fallen upon suitable shoulders. Delegations of 
citizens from different States waited upon the Chief Magistrate, 
and tendered him their hearty support. To one of these from 
New Hampshire, shortly after his installation, he used the fol- 
lowing language : 

•'Treason is a crime and must be punished as a crime. It mustnot be 
regarded as a mere difference of political opinion. It must not be ex- 
cused as an unsuccessful rebellion, to be overlooked and forgiven. It is 
a crime before which all other crimes sink into insignificance ; and in 



406 A REVIEW OF THE 

saying this, it must not be considered that I am influenced by angry or 
revengeful feelings."* 

Not only did President Johnson express liimsolf in the strong- 
est terms, that treason must he made odious ; but as an adroit 
dissembler he humored public sentiment, and moved with the 
current as it drifted. Deferring to public opinion, which came 
to suspect that Booth and his accomplices, were simply instru- 
ments in the hands of the President of the defunct Confederacy, 
and other prominent men of the South, on the 2d of May, 1865, 
he issued a proclamation oifering large rewards for the arrest of 
certain prominent characters, whom suspicion had designated. 
In this proclamation, one hundred thousand dollars were offered 
for the capture of Jefferson Davis ; and twenty-five thousand 
each, for Clement C. Clay, Jacob Thompson, George N. Sanders 
and Beverly Tucker ; and ten thousand for "William C. Cleary, 
the late clei-k of Mr. Clay, 

It was not long, after the President's accession to the Chair of 
State, that one remark after another began to disclose his real 
sentimerxts ; and show that he was not in sympathy with the 
revolutionary element of the party to which he owed his election. 
In an address to a delegation from Indiana, April 21st, 18G5, he 
touched the cardinal question of the time, that of reconstruction, 
in the following words : 

"Some are satisfied with the idea that States are to be lost in terri- 
torial and otlier divisions, — are to loose their character as States. But 
their life-breath has only been suspended, and it is a high constitutional 
obligation we have to secure each of these States in the possession 
and enjoyment of a republican form of government. ■•• "-' * 

While I have opposed dissolution and disintegration on the one hand, 
on the other I have opposed consolidation or the centralizat'on of power 
in the hands of the few."f 

Such language disclosed the fact that Andrew Johnson was neith- 
er an advocate of the State suicide theory of Sumner and Stevens 
nor a consolidationist of the school of Alexander Hamilton. To 
reconcile, however, the above and other utterances of like char- 
acter, with expressions made Avhilst he was Military Governor of 
Tennessee, is a somewhat difficult problem, but which time per- 
haps may aid in solving. But a Maurice of Saxony, was needed to 
figure upon the arena of American history. In Andrew Johu- 



* Annual Cyclopcech'a for 1805, p. 801. 
j; Annual Cjjclopcedia. for 18(55, p. 801. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AI^IERICA. 437 

son, it may have been that the gold of constitutional clemocj-acy 
was again beginning to gleam through the sedimental filth of 
fanaticism, which had flooded it since the advent of the revolu- 
tionists to power. 

The President for a time was very guarded in his expressions, 
and only an occasional sentence dropped from him, that (as time 
disclosed) indicated his genuine opinions. The excitement aroused 
by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, upon the close of the re- 
bellion, caused almost the firmest defenders of principle to vacillate 
somewhat in their political action, and bend before the terrific blasts 
of vindictive fury that were coursing all sections of the country. 
President Jolmson would have required well-nigh super-human 
endowments to have resisted all the demands which fanaticism 
exacted of him ; and to have steadily opposed every effort which 
the revolutionists made to utterly crush with the merciless heel 
of oppression, the conquered people of the Southern States. On 
the first of May, 1865, the President, following the advice of 
his Attorney-General, appointed a military commission to try 
the conspirators for the assassination of the murdered President. 
This officer pretented to find in the law of nations, authority for 
trying the culprits by military rather than by civil law. It was 
not difficult for that law officer of the Administration to invent 
excuses for the appointment of a military commission, when, 
after the close of the war he could, as chief legal expositor of 
the Government, declare that the wearing of Confederate uni- 
forms was a fresh act of hostility. 

The military commission, charged with the trial of the conspira- 
tors, sat from Maj^ loth until June 20th, 1865 ; and, after having 
heard the evidence, sentenced the accused to punishments which the 
civil law had no power to inflict. Four of those charged as 
conspirators, David E. Harold, George S. Atzerodt, Lewis Payno 
and Mary E. Suratt, were sentenced by the Commission to be 
Imng, which sentence was approved by President Johnson, and 
the 7tli of July Avas fixed for their execution. A writ of Habeas 
Corpus, sued out in behalf of Mrs. Suratt, was suspended by the 
President ; and strenuous efforts were made in the interests of 
this individual, in order to shield her from the doom of legal 
murder to which the American officials had condemned her. 
Even President Jolmson, on the morning of the execution, 
refused to meet the suppliant daughter of the devoted woman, 



403 A REVIEW OF THE 

whom the furies were about to immolate to the manes of 
Abraham Lincoln. A dark cloud must ever rest upon the mem- 
ory of the President who permitted fanaticism to exult in the 
sacriiice of this innocent female. Indeed, the execution of these 
four victims will ever stand in American history as one of the 
darkest blots upon its pages. The four victims were virtually 
murdered, inasmuch as they were tried and condemned by a tri- 
bunal unauthorized by the Federal Constitution. This govern- 
mental compact declares that : 

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous 
crime, unless on the presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except 
in cases arising iij the land or naval forces, or in the militia when iu 
actual service, in time of war or actual danger," 

On tlae 29th of May, 1865, the President instituted measures 
for the re-establrsliment of Federal authority in the subjugated 
States of the South. On this date he issued his Proclamation 
of Amnesty and Pardon, granting general forgiveness for past 
offenses to all those engaged in the rebellion, with fourteen ex- 
ceptions, which included the most influential and intelligent of 
the Southern Confederates. And following in the wake of his 
predecessor. President Johnson, as a Poman Emperor, would 
have selected his pretors, named one after another, Military 
Governors for the States of Kortli Carolina, South Carolina, 
Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi and Texas ; but none 
were appointed for Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana. 
The measures already taken by Abraham Lincoln for the re-or- 
ganization of these last named States, were regarded by his 
successor as having placed them rectae in curia. William M. 
Llolden, the first appointed of these, was named Governor of 
North Carolina the same day on which the afore mentioned edict 
of amnesty had been promulgated. 'In this pronunciamento it 
was ordered, as regards all voters in the South, before being re- 
clothed with the elective franchise, that they should take and 
subscribe an oath which the Constitution did not prescribe ; and 
which required them to abide by and support all laws and proc- 
lamations, which had been made during the rebellion, with ref- 
erence to the emancipation of slaves. All such demands m.ade 
of the people of the South, were utterly inconsistent with the 
Drinciples of the Federal Government. In the appointment of 
the Governors, and in the forced dictation of terms for the res- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 109 

to ration of autliority in the subjugated section, whilst the States 
were still named as such, they, nevertheless, were treated simply 
as conquered provinces ; and governed by the laws of military 
dominion, which obtained during the middle ages. 

Revolutionary as was the method pursued by President John- 
son, for restoring the rebel States to their autonomy in the 
Union, it was not sufficiently so to meet the approval of the 
radical Abolitionists. It was clearly understood before the 
avowal of any plan of restoration by the President, that unless 
his views coincided with the radicals, his policy would be com- 
batted by them. The unconcealed Abolitionists no longer de- 
manded emancipation alone for the negro, but they now in- 
sisted likewise upon his social and political equality with the whites. 
Wendell Phillips, one of the early and consistent leaders of the 
Abolition party, in a speech delivered at the Cooper Institute, 
May 12th, 1865, gave utterance to the following sentiments : 

"Abolitionists secui'ed liberty for the black man ; he achieved but half 
of his work, which he had pledged half his life to effect during thirty 
years. I shall never relax my efforts till an amendment to the Constitu- 
tion is passed, declaring tliat no State shall make any distinction between 
l^ersons born on oxu- soil, and those residing on it, on account of race, 
color or descent." * 

No sooner, therefore, had the President avowed his plan of 
restoring the Southern States in the appointment of William W. 
Holden, as Military Governor of North Carolina, than the con- 
flict with him was commenced. By his method, which was 
simply pursuing that inaugurated by Abraham Lincoln, the 
Southern whites would have had in their hands the sole power 
to re-shape their Constitutions, and mold the legislation of their 
respective States. Two antagonistic theories were striving for 
the ascendancy in the work of reconstruction. The Presidential 
plan was reprobated at once by Wendell Phillips, Salmon P. 
Chase, Horace Greeley, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and 
other shining lights of radicalism. A division in the Republi- 
can ranks was imminent ; but it was the work of the tacticians 
to keep it from spreading to any further extent than could be 
avoided. 

The Military Governors appointed by the President, issued 
proclamations to the people of their different States, calling 

*New York World, May 13th, 1865. 



410 A REVIEW OF THE 

upon tliem to elect delegates to conventions to revise tlieir several 
Constitutions ; these being now viewed by the conquerors as en- 
tirely defunct. All the proceedings, however, which looked to 
the restoration of the Federal authority in the Confederate 
States, were deemed necessary to be employed in order to com- 
plete the first measure of radical desire. The plan of revising 
the several State Constitutions, was a more modest method of 
getting fully rid of the institution of slavery, than any other 
that might have been devised. Abolition aspiration from the 
inauguration of the war, aimed at this as the fii'st object to be 
accomplished ; and no method promised for this result absolute 
surety, save the suppression of the institution by the Southern 
States themselves, after having been brought under Federal con- 
trol. And the task was no difficult one upon the downfall of 
the rebellion. The great object of the war being well under- 
stood by all intelligent classes, whether ISTorthern or Southern ; 
when resistance to the Government was abandoned, the Con 
federates, with one consent almost, gave up any further defense 
of their institution. 

Prominent statesmen throughout the South, declared their 
readiness to acquiesce in the overthrow of the institution of 
slavery, deeming the further advocacy of it nugatory. It was 
altogether as they conceived, ready to be ranked amongst the things 
of the past. /There were many, however, who \iewed the 
amnesty oath, which the citizens were obliged to subscribe before 
being clothed with the elective franchise, as a despotic trampling 
upon the rights of free men born in a republican government ; 
but the current of popular opinion in the South, notwithstanding 
this, turned strongly in favor of resuming, at the earliest practi- 
cable moment, and by the only method proposed, amicable 
relations with the people of the Northern States. Officers were 
authorized in all places to administer oaths of amnesty to the 
citizens, and furnish them such certificates thereof, as would 
enable them to participate in the elections to be held for dele- 
gates to the conventions to revise their several State Constitu- 
tions. Before taking the oath, the ap2)licant was required to 
make affidavit that he did not belong to any of the fourteen ex- 
cepted classes. Having subscribed this, he was then allowed the 
oath of amnesty, which operated as a pardon for all past political 
offenses, and restored him fully to the rights of citizenship. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IIS AMERICA. 411 

Public meetings were held throughout the entire South, and 
candidates of talent and character were nominated, and in many 
instances pledged to the repeal of the Ordinances of Secession 
and the abolition of slavery ; and also, in favor of such amend- 
ments to the State Constitutions, as might seem necessary, under 
the new condition of affairs. 

All the time, from the announcement of the Presidential plan 
of reconstruction, public opinion in the IS^orth was in a condition 
of ebullition. Political lines began at once to divide somewhat 
upon the new issues. Prominent radical papers began to endorse 
the ideas of Sumner, Stevens and other leaders, who had ex- 
pressed themselves as favorable to universal suffrage. Democratic 
newspapers, on the contrary, soon after the appointment of 
William W. Holden as Governor of Korth Carolina, began to 
view the new President, although elected by Republicans, as a 
man who was not dominated by fanatical ideas, and who desired 
a fair and honorable restoration of the Southern States to their 
place in the Federal Union, and with all their rights save slavery 
unimpaired. Early in June, 1865, Democratic Committees re- 
corded their endorsement of the President's reconstruction 
policy. In endorsing the President's plan of reconstruction,'^' 
the Democrats did so, however, simply as a choice of evils, and 
not because it was a method which they, as rulers, would have 
devised. A considerable number of prominent Republicans also 
ranked themselves under the Presidential banner. Many of 
those who did so, were anxious to preserve harmony in the 
Republican party. Even as strong a radical as Gov. Andrew, 
of Massachusetts, thought the effort to force negro suffrage in 
the South, was premature; and that the Government should 

*President Johnson's plan of reconstruction, was the same as that which 
Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet had originated. William H. Seward, 
the Secretary of the State, under both administrations, in his speech of 
October 20th, 1865, at Auburn, New York, said : "We are continually- 
hearing debates concerning the origin and the plan of restoration. New 
converts, Norih and South, call it the President's plan. All speak of it 
as if it were a recent development. On the contrary, we now see that 
it is not specially Andrew Johnson's plan, nor even a new plan in any 
respect. It is the plan which abrujjtly, yet distinctly, offered itself to 
the last Administration, at the moment, I have before recalled, when 
the work of restoration was to begin ; at the moment when, although 
by the world unparceived, it did begin, and it is the only plan which 
thus seasonably presented itself ; and, therefore, is the only possible 
plan which then, or ever afterwards, could be adopted," — New York 
World, October 2ith, 1865. 



412 . A REVIEW OF THE 

siinplj retain its military grasp of the rebel States, and universal 
suffrage would in time follow. The Governor was very anxious 
to avoid a breach with the President. General Cox, the Repub- 
lican candidate for Governor of Ohio, came out in a letter early 
in 1865, opposing negro suffrage. 

The fissure between President Johnson and the radicals once 
formed by the announcement of his plan of reconstruction, con- 
tinued steadily to grow wider and develope itself. It soon be- 
came apparent in the Summer of 1865, that the leaders of the 
conflicting theories of State restoration had taken their posttions, 
and that no retreat was contemplated by either party. The 
New York Woi'ld spoke of this party schism as follows : 

" The split in the Republican party has made too much progress to be 
arrested. Several of the most eminent Republican leaders, with a ma- 
jority of the party to back them*, stand against negro suffrage and they 
will not recede. Chief Justice Cliase, Senators Sherman, Wilson, Sum- 
ner, and others of equal influence and distinction, are ardent negro suf- 
frage men, in declared opposition to the policy of the President ; and the 
first Republican State Convention held since Mr. Johnson's avowal of 
liis policy on this subject (that of Iowa on June 14th, 1865), adopted 
negro suffrage as a plank in their platform. * * * xhe quar- 
rel will be likely to culminate in the next Congress, when the radical 
members will assume to revise the Constitutions of the reconstructed 
States, that do not admit negroes to the elective franchise."! 

In a public speech, Senator AVilson had already been bold 
enouo-h as to warn the President that the radicals in Congress 
would reject every State Constitution, which did not come up to 
their mark on the slavery question. Radical meetings were held 
in different sections of the North, favoring negro suffrage. The 
Republican Convention of the State of Maine, held in 1865, 
took exception to the President's reconstruction policy, and by 
implication condemned it; the Democratic Convention of the^ 
same State, on the contrary, endorsed it without reservation. 
The representative part}'- bodies of other States, placed themselves 
in about the same attitude towards the President's policy as did 
those of the States already named. 



* This clause of the World's statement, that the majority of the Re- 
publican party stood with those leaders who opposed negro suffrage was 
clearly overdrawn. The majority of the party at this time were favor- 
able to universal suffrage. Negro suffrage was made a party question in 
the State of Connecticut in 1865, and only defeated by 6272 votes. No 
Democrat supported it. 

\Nqw York World, June 21st, 1875. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. , ^„ 

The confiscation and extermination theory of reconstritctio- 
,lso found its advocates along with the others that were advocated 
n 1865, The leading rej^resentative of this theory was Thad- 
leus Stevens, who npon the close of the war, loomed np as the 
jreat beacon of radicalism ; and the man who was destined to 
ixert a potent influence upon the reconstruction policy of the 
lation. Since the commencement of the war he had stood before 
he country as the most radical abolitionist in the lower House of 
Congress ; and the representative of all others, who determined 
ihat no constitutional barriers should interpose between him and 
lis party in their race towards the goal of universal liberty and 
equality. Being the extreme leader of the extreme wing of his 
Darty, crowned at length with victory over their opponents, Mr. 
Stevens was now able to bear a weight upon his political arms 
;hat none other could pretend to carry. lie could Math impunity, 
:lierefore, dare to advocate a policy that would have been unsafe 
For any other leader of his party to have urged. Kegarded as 
the unconcealed opponent of the principles that had triumphed 
in the overthrow of the rebellion, he was free to claim their 
legitimate fruits; and with unabashed effontry, he assumed as 
the dictator of his party, to demand them. 

In September, 1865, Mr. Stevens delivered a speec?i in the 
City of Lancaster, in which he advocated the confiscation of the 
property of all the leading rebels whose estate was worth ten 
thousand dollars, or whose land exceeded two hundred acres in 
quantity. He estimated that one-tenth of the whites only 
would loose their property by such a proceeding ; yet that most 
of the real estate would be confiscated, it being held by the few. 
Of the property thus to be taken from the wealthy rebels, he 
declared that justice demanded that forty acres of it should be 
given to each freedmen, and the balance sold to liquidate the 
national debt. He calculated that by this process the sum of 
three thousand five hundred millions of dollars would flow 
into the public treasury, enough to pay off the debt contracted 
in the subjugation of the Southern people. The alliance be- 
tween abolitionism and communism was proven in the demand 
of this intellectual leader. A more wholesale confiscation of the 
property of the discomfitted resistants of fanaticism, was urged 
by Mr. Stevens, than had taken place in England under William 
the JNorman. The real animus of abolitionism^ however vras 



^j^ . A REVIEW OF THE 

shown in tlie position of this bold champion of his party. 
The elections for the constitutional conventions took place at 
the times determined upon in the different States of the South. 
The delegates to these promptly convened and proceeded to organ- 
ize, as the conquerors prescribed./ Many of the prominent men 
of these States, and those even who had figured in the rebellion, 
appeared and took seats as members of the constitutional con- 
ventions. A dictatorial oath was likewise imposed upon every 
member of these several conventions, that they would support 
all laws and proclamations which had been made during the war 
with reference to slaves. These bodies adopted resolutions re- 
scinding the acts of secession which their several States had 
enacted and abolishing slavery ; and they framed Constitutions for 
their respective Commonwealths in conformity with the altered 
situation of affairs. After the adoption of the new Constitutions, 
elections wei'e held in these different States for Governors, Mem- 
bers of Congress, Members of State Legislatures, and other 
officials. When the Legislatures convened, they in general 
adopted the amendment to the Constitution proposed by Con- 
gress, abolishing slavery President Johnson strongly urged 
upon the Legislature of South Carolina, that it ratify the newly 
submitted amendment, as an example for the imitation of the 
other States. It did so, by an almost unanimous vote. But the 
representative assemblies of these States were for the time 
being, pure automata,* subject to the dictation of those who 
controlled opinion at the seat of the National Government ; and 
their acts in no wise represented the free and independent senti- 
ments of their people. 

* Thaddeus Stevens was fully conscious that the Constitutions already- 
forced upon the Southern States, in 1865, were altogether the result of 
Northei-n domination. Speaking of the Confederates, when once re- 
stored to their place in the Union and become masters of their own 
affairs, in his speech of December 18th, 1865, he said : " That they (the 
Southern people) would scorn and disregard their present Constitutions, 
forced upon them in the midst of martial law, would be both natural 
and just. No one who has any regard for freedom of elections, can look 
on those governments, forced upon them in duress, with any favor." — 
Congressional Globe, d9th Congress, First Session, Vol. 1, p. 74 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AlVIERICxi. 415 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



ANTI-REPUBLICAN RECONSTRUCTION. 



The unconstitutionality and anti-republican character of the 
war for emancipation and negro elevation, under the pretense of 
defending the Union, were fully displayed after the close of the 
national conflict ; when efforts were inaugurated to re-ceraent 
" the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious 
Union." The appalling spectacle in all its horror was in full 
view, which New England's ablest statesman, with ardent love 
of country, had wished never to contemplate. The prayer of 
the patriot had been heard, but the drama was being witnessed 
of " States discordant, belligerent, a land rent with civil feuds," 
and but lately " drenched in fraternal blood." The glorious 
ensign of the Repnblic was no longer waving over the peaceful 
fabric of the American Union •, but what remained of it, typi- 
fied an anarchical despotism, more ignoble and tyrannous than 
could be found outside of the dominions of Asia. 

The principle of monarchy had mailed the batallions that 
prostrated constitutional government on the American continent. 
The harmonious people of the States had been hurled into sec- 
tional strife by mischievous intermeddling, induced by the 
monarchical conception which assumed in essence to declare, " / 
am holier than thouP Instead of a free and happy Union, 
whose yeaxly governmental expenditure did not require over 
seventy millions of dollars, the unrighteous war of the emanci- 
pationists entailed upon it an annual expense of nearly five hun- 
dred millions, in order to meet the interest upon the Northern 
debt and other attendant demands. A highly oppressive tariff, 
enhanced for the consumers the value of the articles of every 
day necessity, and yielded for the liquidation of current 
expenses, over one hundred millions of dollars ; where prior to 
the struggle less than half that amount had been raised through 
this politic method of indirect taxation. Interest on the national 



410 A REVIEW OF THE 

debt of three tlionsand millions, was to be collected from ^tlie 
labor of a liigbly taxed people. A pension list of Northern 
soldiers required the annual sum of thirty millions.'^' A Freed- 
men'a Bureau had been created for a population which, in its 
natural condition of subordination, was comfortable and happy 
before the intermedlers a})peared. This newly framed Bureau 
required for its support as large a sum of money as the whole 
Government during the Administration of John Q. Adams had 
consumed. Besides, the expense of a considerable standing 
ariliy to watch the movements of the Southern jjeoj^le, was added 
to the burden of the citizens. 

Anti-republicanism, after the close of the struggle of arms, 
dominated more strongly than ever in the counsels of both wings 
of the conquering party of the Korth, in the efforts made to 
adjust the sectional strife. It was attempted to be settled upon 
the principle of might dictating to right ; and by means of 
the basest pandering to the uncultured ideas of the mob, that 
ever was witnessed in any country All justice was ignored 
and the equality of the States repudiated. The refusal to con- 
sider the question of adjusting Southern loss in the unjust 
emancipation of their slaves.; the forced obliteration of the 
Confederate debts ; and the pensioning of Korthem soldiers to 
the exclusion of Southern, simply added new fuel to the flames 
of strife between the sections, intensified existing hate, and made 
republican union upon such a basis an impossibility Henry S. 
Lane, a Republican Senator from Indiana, seeing these difiiculties 
in the way of an amicable settlement, spoke as follows : 

"Do you suppose they (the Southern people) will willingly tax them- 
selves to pay the interest upon the immense debt, created for tlieir sub. 
jugation and overthrow ? 

" There are other questions you will be called upon to decide. You 
%vill have to i^rovide a fund for the payment of your invalid pensioners. 
Think you they will vote willingly to raise money to pay the pensions of 
your invalid soldiers, when their own invalid pensioners are excluded ? 
Can you hope for any cordial co-operation between the rebels and your- 
selves, upon any of these great subjects of national legislation ; * * » 
I tremble in view of the evil consequences which would result from the 
admission of rebel members to your national debt, to the national credit, 
the plighted faith of the nation, to your bondholders, the plighted faith 
of the nation to your living and dead heroes."t 

*■ Annual Report of Commissioner of Pensions for 1874, p. 8. 
j; Annual Cydopcedia, in 1866, p. 151. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN ASIERICA. 417 

But it Wcas only the faitli of fanatics that was plighted in the 
Korth, and that for base political purposes. And faith was not 
plighted upon one side alone. Southern faith had been plighted 
in defense of the rights guaranteed by tlie Constitution. And 
Confederate honor was equally sensitive ^nth Federal ; and was 
never dimmed when compared with any of which the North could 
boast. Equity, therefore, had demands in behalf of Southern 
wrongs, equally as foi Northern. And Confederate soldiers felt 
their weakness and wounds, quite as keenly as did those who had 
been maimed under McClellan at Antietam or Meade at Gettysburg. 
The God of Justice demanded that the poor and wounded Con- 
federate be treated by a generous and Christian nation with 
equal tenderness as the Federal who had exhausted his strength, 
to do what his hypocritical masters denied that they meant to 
accomplish. The poor Confederate was not even accused by his 
savage conquerors, of having sinned in conscience, in lighting for 
his section and people, and in defense of their inherrited and 
constitutional rights. If the soldiers of either of the contestants 
deserved to be pensioned, they surely, with equal right, deserved 
this favor who fought for constitutionalism and the iDheritances 
of their countrymen. But a pretended and pitiful amnesty was 
all the boon accorded the crippled Southern soldier to soothe his 
declining years, and soften the hard pillow of advancing days. 
It was generous and humane to pension the wounded Federal 
soldiers, who had risked their lives upon the fields of battle, 
fought between the sections of oui country. But no holier zeal 
inspired them than animated the Confederate soldiers to hazard 
all in the service of their States. The Federals obeyed what 
they conceived to be lawful authority ; so did the Confederates. 
When the former in the great settlement were deemed by a 
kind government deserving of being pensioned, the latter were 
entitled to the same consideration. In addition to this, it was 
the only method for the Government to pursue, if it meant to 
harmonize in one pacific Union, the Northern and Southern 
States. The needy and crippled Confederate was, however, 
contemptuously cast aside, as not even deserving the sympathy 
of the people of his own native South. An opening ear of jus- 
tice will yet meet his troubles and compensate him for what the 
obdurate heart of fanaticism denied him. But the widow and 
orphan, and thousands equally innocent, whose all was treasured 



418 • A REVIEW OF THE 

up in Southern capital, whicli sunk at the dictate of the revolu- 
tionists, were likewise overlooked by men who madlj expected to 
cement a peaceful Union, by means of war, rapine and robbery. 

Wise and philosophical statesmen, desirous of restoring the 
iJnion, would not have demanded of the Southern people, that 
they abandon all the rights for which they fought ; and acquiesce 
wholly in the imperious behests of the conquerors. I^one, save a 
wicked and demented tyrant, refuses to consider the causes which 
have induced his subjects to rebel. If the Union of the States 
was to be reformed, this could alone be done by a general and 
free convention of the representative minds of the conflicting 
sections; and upon such terms as would be acceptable to all 
parties and interests. It was fully dissolved by the war of the 
rebellion ; and if a new Union were to be constructed, it must of 
necessity be the work of compromise, and effected in the same nmn- 
ner as it hr.d originally been organized. But to a thinking mind, 
the destruction of the Union was final and complete the moment 
that war fired up the passions and fury of the people of the 
North and South against each other. The antagonism of two 
powerful, warring nations, as were the Fedei'als and Confederates, 
can never afterwards he eradicated ; and humanity and civilization 
both demanded a peaceful separation, In preference to the wicked 
four year conflict, that was cruelly waged to subjugate a free 
people, and give freedom to barbarians, who are incapable of 
appreciating its fruits. 

But the base spirit of tyi-anny and monarchy, which inspii-ited 
the crazy madmen of the North to inaugurate and wage with 
their own people a bloody war of several years, still rode tri- 
umphant, and animated the revolutionists to further victory. 
The weakness of democratic government fully unfolded itself, 
during the fierce struggle of arms, and afterwards in the forum 
of legislation. Its infirmity arose from the multitude of foes 
within its own household. Its foes are the tyrants and slaves, 
that ever produce the festering and corruption of humanity 
which ends in monarchy and despotism. In all the efforts of 
President Johnson to restore the seceded States, the virus of 
despotism was blighting instead of giving life to the branches of 
the Republic. What else was the unconstitutional test oaths 
which Southern citizens were required to accept, before being 
permitted to exercise the rights of franchise ? i What, besides 



POLrnCAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 419 

tliat, was it that induced the arrest and incarceration of Jefferson 
Davis, Alexander H. Stephens, and other prominent citizens of 
the South, who had with their people been recognized as bellio-- 
erents in the family of nations ? What, but despotism, was it 
that required the Southern legislators to adopt the amendment 
to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, and repudiate all the debts 
contracted in resisting the Abolition Administration ? In assum- 
ing to pardon rebels, President Johnson simply deferred as a 
demagogue to the popular ideas of the ISTorth ; there being in a 
strict constitutional view, nothing to be pardoned, as the intelli- 
gent revohitionists themselves well understood.* The experi- 
ment, at least, was never hazarded to determine, whether any 
treason had been committed by the rebellious men of the South. 
The mongrels knew that to be dangerous ground, and never had 
the courage to venture upon it. In the forum of law and reason, 
they themselves might have been convicted of all the treason 
that was committed, and shown to have been the wicked deceivers 
who caused all the blood to be shed that flowed in the unhappy 
struggle. The future has this judgment yet in store for them, 
and to be gibbeted in infamy with England's regicides. But in 
executing the pretended power to pardon the rebels, Andrew 
Johnson acted as a despot, rather than the President of a 
Kepublic. A wise and liberal policy demanded that rebels and 
Federals be treated as equals, and that they freely and without 
constraint be permitted, through their Representatives, to deter- 
mine whether they would live together in one government, or 
organize separate ones. 

But despotic as was the policy of Andrew Johnson, for the res- 
toration of the rebel States, which had been coined for his use by 
President Lincoln and his counsellors, it was not such a one as suited 
the purposes of the extreme revolutionists. The radical leaders 
perceived the disadvantage they would sustain, should the South- 
ern States be restored to their places in the Union ; and they 
sought by every means in their power to delay the restoration of 
those States until negro suffrage could be forced upon them, and 



*Gerritt Smith, the fanatic but honest abolition pioneer, delivered an 
address at Cooper Institute, New York, to prove that " the government 
has neither the legal nor the moral right to try the rebels." He con- 
tended that the Government had absolved them from the crime of trea- 
son by acknowledging them as belligerents. — New York Times, June 10, 
lt65. 



420 A REVIEW OF THE 

the rebel strcngtli neutralized by barbarian Africans. These 
States, during the Autumn of 1865, under the plan of recon- 
struction presented for their acceptance bj President Johnson, 
had elected Senators and Eepresentatives to the Thirty-ninth 
Congress, which was to meet in December, 1865. To prevent 
the admittance of these was the work of Thaddeus Stevens and 
the crafty leaders of his party. When Congress assembled, 
December 4t]i, it was shrewdly arranged that the names of the 
Senators and Members of Congress elected from the eleven 
Southern States, should be omitted from the rolls of the respective 
Houses until after the organization of both bodies.* This was 
the turning point of the scheme. It was determined upon in 
conclave, that but few, if any, from those States should be ad- 
mitted until they would be reconstructed upon the basis of negro 
suffrage. 

In accordance with what had been planned, and before Presi- 
dent Johnson's Message had been presented to Congress, Thad- 
deus Stevens submitted his famous resolution, which had been 
approved in a secret caucus of the revolutionists. This resolution 
called for the appointment of a joint committee of fifteen — six 
Senators and nine Members of the House — whose duty it should 
be to inquire into the condition of the Southern States, and re- 
port whether any of them are entitled to be represented in either 
House of Congress ; and until such report shall have been sub- 
mitted, no member from any of these shall be received into 
either of the representative bodies. 

Mr. Stevens secured the passage of his resolution in both 
Houses of Congress, and was made Chairman of the- " Revolu- 
tionary Committee." Of all the men who might have been 
named, he was most deserving of that honor. The work to be 
performed by this dark tribunal, was of such a character as to 

*Tliat the omission of these names was part of a concerted plan, tha 
following extract from a speech of Geoi"ge T. Curtis, in Brooklyn, seems 
to show : " The culminating point on wliich this matter is to turn, will 
be the action of tlie Clerk of the last House of Representatives in pre^jar- 
ing the list of the members elect of the new House. It is given out — I 
knoAV not on what authority — that the gentleman who held the oiSce of 
Clerk of the last House, intends not to place upon the li.st, the names of 
any persons returned as members of the new House froni any S.ate that 
has been in rebelion. If the Clerk, Mr. McPhei'son, means to act wisely, 
I would advise him to seek the opinion of some constitutional lawyer, 
who is above being influenced in his legil opinions by his i^olitical affin- 
ities, and to act vipon the opinion that may be given to him. It may 
save him much future tribulation,"' — New York Times, Nov. 8, 1865, 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 431 

require the services of an entrepid, reckless and daring man, 
such as Mr. Stevens had ah-eady shown himself to be. He Avas 
on all sides, even by his political enemies, acknowledged as the 
ablest and most influential leader of his party in Congress. This 
secret committee, being a conscience extinguisher, a man was 
required as its director, who in former years had desired no in- 
trusive monitions from that unruly messenger of humanity ; 
and who had the boldness to enjoin his partisans to consign the 
busy intruder to the custody of Pandemonium's master. The 
service to be performed by this ever to be remembered committee, 
Avas of a death-bringing nature to the principles of republicanism 
and free government ; and such as Mr. Stevens and his intelligent 
party followers could not but have realized. The task of this 
des]3otic directory, .was to disfranchise a sufficient number of the 
rebels ; and, on the other hand, enfranchise the emancipated 
negroes, so as thereby to secure the permanent ascendancy of the 
revolutionary party, who might in after years rear monuments 
of glory to its intellectual creator. 

Free government being the conception and product alone of 
the Caucasian race, tlie attempt in republican America to thrust 
its keeping into the hands of barbarian negroes, was one of the 
maddest and wickedest schemes that State-craft and perlidj^ ever 
devised for selfish, partisan purposes. It fully equalled the mad- 
ness of the French revolution, as subsequent experience has 
clearly demonstrated. With the exception of a few bold and 
dangerous destructives, the Abolition leaders themselves believed 
that the Southern negroes were entirely unfitted to be entrusted 
with the right of suffrage. Senator Fessenden, himself an 
ardent Abolitionist, after the appointment of the above danger- 
ous committee, and whose purpose was already planned, spoke of 
universal suffrage as follows : 

" At this time no one contends that the mass of the population of the 
recent slave States, is fit to be admitted to the exercise of the right of 
suffrage."* 

But the leaders were well aware that the Southern whites 
were almost a unit in opposition to the political theories of the 
Abolition party ; and perceiving this, they saw tliat it was 
necessary to secure the aid of the negroes in the South, or their 
party would certainly be overthrown with Southern restoration. 

* Annual Ci/dopcedia, 1866, p. 150. 



422 A REVIEW OF THE 

They were well aware that the JN^orthern Democrats and the 
Southern whites would again unite to resist the party of destruc- 
tion ; and that united, these would be able to seize control 
of the Government. And it was to avert this political calamity 
that negro suffrage was so strongly advocated by the revolution- 
ists. It was not, therefore, the belief that universal suffrage was 
demanded as a right, or that the interests of republican govern- 
ment would be promoted by its bestowal upon ths blacks, that 
prompted the negro suffragists in their movements ; but base 
policy induced the support of it in order to prevent the disinto- 
gration of the most corrupt organization which ever controlled 
the affairs of any nation. , 

Thaddeus Stevens, the Chairman of the odious Committee, 
was a follower of Alexander Hamilton, and one who believed 
that Great Brittain exhibited the best form of government that 
the wisdom of man had ever yet devised.* In that country, a 
restricted suffrage prevailed. It would be very improbable to 
suppose that a believer in the perfection of the kingly govern, 
ment of England, could be induced to favor negro suffrage, 
unless he desired the more speedily to ruin i*epublican institu- 
tions, in order that his favorite system of polity might be substi- 
tuted. By far the most likely motive, however, which prompted 
Mr. Stevens, in his efforts to secure the right of suffrage for the 
freed blacks, was, as he himself confessed, to bolster up his party 
and forever weaken his political antagonists, the constitutional 
democracy. Base and ignoble were all such motives ; and the 
men thus incited to act, deserve the execration of all future ages. 
The American Union had been pronounced the model republic 
of the ancient or modern world ; and even to hazard its perpe- 
tuity or the principles it embodied, was more fiendish and dia- 
bolical than the darkest treason of midnight conclaves. 

* During the trial of the Christiana rioters in Philadelphia, Mr. Stevens, 
■who was one of the counsel in the celebrated case, in int?rviews which 
he had in the house of an old political companion, who had sat with him 
as a member of the Reform Convention of 183T-'8, expressed the opinion 
that the British form of government was the most perfect conception of 
man. Had he expressed tliis opinion after tlie ruin which fanaticism 
had brought upon the country he would be excusable, and could with 
justice be named a monarchist from necessity; but having entertained 
the belief before the deluge of social destruction came, is sufficient to 
entitle him to be enrolled as a, monarchist in principle, and an Abolitionist 
from a desire to be odd and eccentric, which wai soinewhat in him a 
characteristic. His aspirations for fame are proof of this latter view. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 423 

Tlie doctrine of Sumner and Stevens, which sustained the 
appointment of the Revolutionary Committee of fifteen, was 
endorsed by the extremists because it was the only one which 
would secure in their interest negro suffrage. This was the sole 
object sought to be accomplished in the reconstruction of the 
Union. If the j)lan of restoration, which Andrew Johnson 
adopted for the Southern States ; and which came to be known 
as the Presidential policy, should be accepted, the question of 
suffrage would be left with the people of the States, where the 
Constitution placed it. Mr, Stevens and his allied revolutionary 
followers well knew that the people of the South were most in- 
tensely hostile to conferring the right of suffrage upon the igno- 
rant negroes, who had lately been their slaves. These radical 
men perceived, however, that the subversion of the rebel States as 
organizations must be accomplished at every hazard, otherwise 
suffrage could not be secured for the emancipated slaves. Presi- 
dent Johnson had already become an object of hatred with the 
leaders, because they had been unable to loater Jiimf-^ with that 
advantage which they had hoped. Mr. Stevens, who was a 
shrewd discerner of men, in the Baltimore Convention of 1864, 
seemed to have surmised a future difl&culty of this character in 
the nomination of Andrew Johnson, a citizen of a slave State, 
for the Vice-Presidency. lie no doubt felt that all native 
Southerners would oppose negro suffrage as a measure inimical 
to republican government. 

The annihilation of the statehood of the seceded common- 
wealths, being the grand essential to be acknowledged in recon- 
struction, the Committee of Fifteen became the ready engine for 
this purpuse. It was insisted that the States by their rebellion 
had ceased to be members of the Federal Union ; were, by the 
overthrow of their armies, become conquered provinces ; and that 

■^Wendell Phillips, the great moral leader of Abolitionism, remarked 
on a certain occasion : "Mr. Lincoln is a growing man ; and why does 
he grow? Because we have loatered him,.'' Garret Davis, of Kentucky, 
in his speech in the Senate of June 7th, 1866, having quoted the above 
words of the Abolition apostle, said : " There was a great deal of truth 
expressed in those few words. The Abolitionists in Congress, and out of 
Congress, tvatered the late President. They cause I him to grow in the 
direction and shape that they wished him. They warped him from his 
own principles and policy to theirs. And what is the great sin of the 
present Executive of the United States ? It is that he will not make 
himself the leader, the obedient tool of the majorities of the two Houses' 
of Congress ; that his judgment of his powers of his duties to the coun- 
try is inconsistent with and may conflict with their party purposes." 



424 A REVIEW OF THE 

their Senators and Representatives should be inhibited from seats 
in the National Congress, until their several State Constitutions 
were altered' in conformity with the wishes of their Korthern 
masters. In this demand, whii^h was simply a part of the secret 
programme originally concerted, the revolutionists were disclos- 
ing their full pur]30ses as yet, however, in a measure concealed 
as a party principle. During the campaign of 1865, the politic 
leaders of the Republican party, denied that negro suifrage was a 
principle of their organization, in order still further to play the 
old card of deception, in which experience had' rendered them 
very skillful.* In suj)porting the annihilation of Southern state- 
hood, the revolutionists were unable to determine at what period 
the act of State destruction had taken place. Had this most 
important event occurred vsdien the State Ordinances of Secession 
were respectively adopted, or when they appeared in insurrection 
against the United States ? If not at either of these periods, did 
it take place when they surrendered their arms to General Grant 
and Sherman, or when they dissolved their Confederate Govern- 
ments, and acknowledged obedience to the Constitution and 
laws of the land ? 



* John Cessna, the Chairman of the Republican State Committee of 
Pennsylvania, denied in a public letter, in the campaign of 1865, that 
negro suffrage was a principle of his party. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 435 



CHAPTER XXVII, 



BREACH WITH PRESIDENT JOHNSON. 



After the Reconstruction Committee of Fifteen had been ap- 
pointed by the Thirty-ninth Congress, other movements were 
instituted by the revohitionary leaders, one after another all 
designed to pave the way for negro suifrage. It was now become 
apparent to all observers, that this was the last grand act to be 
performed ; and then the curtain would drop and the drama be 
ended. Fanatical aspiration aimed at this as its iiltimate goal. 
Senator Stewart, of E"evada, an unconcealed Abolitionist, con- 
fessed Ihis in his speech of January 18th, 1866. He said : 

*• If this question (negro sugrage) were out of the way, we could settle 
everything else in two weeks, at least, so far as a portion of the Southern 
States are concerned, and we could receive such Southern representa- 
tives that are loyal and none other. As the Senator from Ohio has said, 
there would be no difficulty in agreeing upon everything else, if it were 
not for the question of negro suffrage. We may as well meet this issue 
here and understand each other. This is the issue — the only issue before 
the country. * * * There are some who are determined to 
sacrifice the Union and the Constitution, unless they can achieve the 
right of suffrage for the negro." 

It was determined by the managers, that an enlargement of the 
powers of the Freedmen's Bureau should be pressed as one of 
the means to elevate the negro to equality with the white race. 
The original bill for the creation of this bureau, became a law 
March 3d, 1865 ; and was to continue in force for one year after 
the close of the rebellion. Being a serviceable engine of mili- 
tary law to foster strife in the South, which was the nutriment 
of the Republican party, it could not with propriety be aban- 
doned by the revolutionists at a period when the future was 
clouded with uncertainty. The conflict of arms, it is true, was 
ended; but the warfare was only transferred again from the 
field to the forum. The Southern people had been forced to renew 
their allegiance ; the amended Constitutions of their States were 



426 A REVIEW OF THE 

framed in obedience to the dictates of the Executive and tlie 
radical rulers. But the whites were still masters of their State 
administrations, and would so remain unless Congress interfered. 

A plausible pretext was afforded for the continuance of the 
Freedmen's Bureau, in the enactment, by some of the recon- 
structed Legislatures of the South, of vagrant, contract and 
apprentice laws for the government of the emancipated bond- 
men, which seemed to recognize the freed negroes as the inferiors 
of their late masters. All men of ordinary observation could not 
but see that the emancipated slaves were inferior to their former 
owners ; and the necessity of laws to regulate their conduct in 
the new situation in which they were placed, was felt by all who 
had it in their power to rise above political prejudice. But any 
l3gislation,iniplying eveii,+hat a natural difference existed between 
the two races, was extremely offensive to men who had spent a 
life-time in securing the emancipation and liberty of the colored 
race. If these revolutionists did not as yet dare unitedly to pro- 
claim the enfranchisement of the negro, they were able to do 
what was next to it, forbid all discrimination in State Legislation, 
so as to make him as far as possible the equal of the Caucasian 
in other particulars. And to accomplish this, the Freedmen's 
Bureau must be continued for a period, and made to embrace all 
that was possible to be grasped. In the early part of the first 
session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, therefore, a bill for this 
purpose was introduced into the Senate by Lyman Trumbull, of 
Illinois, and was supported by the great body of his party as an 
act which necessity imperatively demanded. 

The working of the Freedmen's Bureau was already perceived 
to be in the interest of the fanatical party ; and in view of the 
determination to exclude the Southern States from representation 
in Congress, until negro suffrage could be forced upon them, it 
must be continued yet for some years. Under it, a system of 
military law might be perpetuated, and this was an advantage 
not to be overlooked by the revolutionists. The great object to 
be achieved by them, was to thwart the State Legislation of the 
Southern whites, as far as the same conflicted with radical policy ; 
baliie Presidential reconstruction, and endeavor to elevate the 
negroes at the expense of the discomiitted rebels. Already 
under color of the Act of March od, 1865, as originally passed, 
authority had been exerted far surpassing the tenor and words 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 427 

3f the Statute, and transcending the bounds claimed for it. 
Even when Senator Sumner, during the discussion of the Freed- 
nen's Bureau Bill had asked for an enlargement of power, his 
xquest was denied ; and yet, so soon as the Act was passed, all 
^vhich he had requested, was without law carried into practice, 
rhe law makers were too timid to concede, what thej were well 
iware would be enforced. 

Besides, victory had not completely crowned the banners of the 
revolutionists, when the novel bureau was first created. They 
Qow, however, were fully masters of the situation, and could 
dictate terms which prior to this, policy forbade. A communistic 
advance, was no longer so dangerous, as before it would have 
been considered. The distribution of rebel property amongst 
the freedmen, could now be discussed with some safety ; and the 
enlargement of the bureau's powers afforded an admirable oppor- 
tunity for this purpose. It was urged, with boldness, by the 
friends of the bureau, that several millions of acres of good land., 
seized as the property of the Confederates, should be set aside 
for the new citizens ; and that houses, schools and hosj^itals 
should be erected for them at public expense. 

The Democrats resisted the enlargement of the Freedmen^s 
Bureau, because of its perpetuation of military rule in the 
Southern States ; and in that view they contended that it was 
violative of the Federal Constitution. The( bill clothed the 
President with authority to appoint an army of officers in the 
South; and this they regarded as an unwarranted stretch of 
power. They further urged that the military jurisdiction thus 
indefinitely attempted to be extended over the eleven Southern 
States, and designed to embrace all questions that might arise 
concerning contracts, in which negroes were parties, was alto- 
gether anti-republican in its character. The creation of such a 
power, without any authority for revision by higher tribunals, 
was at variance with the fundamental principles of American 
jurisprudence. Such legislation, in their view, must in the 
nature of the case, be attended by acts of caprice, injustice and 
passion ; and was without precedent in the former history of the 
country. The proceedings of trials so conducted for the punish- 
ment of offenders in civil life, and when no war was raging, were 
in no respect dissimilar from those in courts martial. The trials 
were to proceed witliout any previous presentment, contrary to 



428 A REVIEW OF THE 

what till Constitution required, an indictment not even being 
necessary to advise the defendant of the accusations to which he 
would be required to plead. Charges ancf specifications, in lieu 
thereof, were alone to be submitted. It was contended that this 
course would be an infringement of the Constitution, which declares 
that : " No person shall be held to answer for a capital or other- 
wise infamous crime, unless on the presentment oi indictment of 
a Grand Jury, except in cases in the land or naval forces, or in 
the militia, when in actual service, in time of war or public dan- 
ger," The trials to take place, were furthermore, in conflict 
with the Constitution, which prescribed that : " In all criminal 
prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and 
public trial by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein 
the crime shall have been committed.'^ 

After a warm debate in Congress, the enlarging Freedmen's 
Bureau Bill passed both Houses, and was remitted to President 
Johnson for his approval. This officer occupied as embarassing 
a position at the time, as could well be conceived. Having lent 
his influence to the extreme men, who had prosecuted the uncon- 
stitutional crusade against the peoj)le of the Southern States, he 
could expect little real sympathy from those who had re- 
sisted the war upon principle, should he break with his party. 
But with the subsidence of the I'ebellion, his early democratic 
ideas began to recur to him ; and having now reached the highest 
seat of power in the nation, he thought himself competent to check 
the revolution in its mad career, which doubtless he had thus far 
accompanied rather as as demagogue than a patriotic statesman. 
Pie returned, therefore, February 19th, 1866, the bill to the 
Senate, in which it had originated, with his reasons for withhold- 
ing: his official sia^nature. Andrew Johnson's reasons for his 
veto, were more sound than consistent with his prior conduct, as 
Military Governor of Tennessee and President of the United 
States. In objecting to the bill, because of its military character, 
ths Executive was simply unconsciously, as it were, passing 
sentence upon his own conduct, in permitting up to that 
period and afterwards, the writ of Habeas Corpus to be sus- 
pended in tbe eleven States of the South, If opposed in prin- 
ciple, to the execution of military law by that part of the army, 
charged with the execution of the Freedmen's Bureau, wliy did he 
permit the same kind of authority to be carried into practice by 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 429 

lie- otlier divisions of the army? The fact is undeniable that 
nilitaiy commissions up to that period, with the President's 
auction, had been held all over the South ; and these had con- 
igned men to penitentiaries, and inflicted other odious punish- 
ments in violation of the plainest provisions of the Federal 
constitution. But the breach between the President and the 
adicals was now rendered complete by his veto j and his impeach- 
aent from that period was one of the questions of discussion. 
!]ven before the open rupture memorials had been in circulation 
,sking that he be impeached for official delinquency. 

The Civil Rights Bill, which was simply complemental to the 
^'reedmen's Bureau Bill ; and part of a scheme for pei-petuating 
nilitary rule in the South, and subverting State sovereignty, was 
lext the engrossing topic of Congressional discussion. It was 
lIso introduced by Senator Trumbull, Chairman of the Judiciary 
;)ommittce, as part of the plan to govern the rebel States until 
lis party should be able to reconstruct them upon the basis of 
miversal suffrage. The essence of the Bill was contained in the 
irst section, which declared that the emancipated slaves "shall 
lave the same right in every State and Territory in the United 
5tates, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties and give 
evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real 
md personal property ; and to the full and equal beneiit of all 
aws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as 
s enjoyed by white persons." 

In support of the Bill, it was urged that several of the South- 
)m States, since their reconstruction upon the Presidential plan, 
lad enacted laws for the freedmen, which would practically reduce 
;hem to a condition of slavery It was the same argument that 
lad been produced in support of the Freedmen's Bureau. The 
criends of the measure believed that they would have the support of 
:lie President in its behalf, as he already in several instances had 
caused the legislative acts of these States, which discriminated 
igainst the blacks, to be set aside. He had done so, through 
Greneral Sickles, declaring that "all laws shall be applicable alike 
to all inhabitants." By his own flat, the President, through 
General Howard, set aside an Act of the Legislature of Missis- 
sippi ; and by another order, through General Terry, an Act of 
the Legislature of Virginia ; and forbade any magistrate or civil 
officer from attempting to execute it. He lilcewise ordered Gen- 



430 A REVIEW OF THE 

eral Canby to cause the State Courts m his Department, to sus- 
pend all suits against persons charged with offenses for which 
white persons were not punished. From what source a President 
vrho was a believer in the doctrine of State Kiglits, could con- 
ceive that ^ich arbitrary power as the above, was derived, is 
somewhat difficult to say. It was as plain an infraction of State 
Hights as could be committed. It was, however, no difficult- 
matter for a President to act in this manner, who could so far 
forget himself as to have uttered the following declaration : 

"Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him 
as a traitor."* 

The Democrats in Congress resisted the Civil Rights Bill in 
all its phases, and portrayed with startling vividness the 
manner in which it undermined the independence of the judic 
iary. If Federal District Attorneys, Marshals, Agents of the 
Freedmen's Bureau, and other officials, shall have it in their 
power to arraign any State Judge, who may interpret a State law 
in a way unsatisfactory to some claimant of justice, of what use 
they insisted, can State laws and State Judges be? Better 
abolish both, without delay. But not only were these petty 
Federal officials empowered, under the Civil Rights Bill, to ap- 
pear as accusers of the State judiciary ; they even had a premium 
held out to them to prefer charges. For every case of alleged 
injustice to a freedman, a fee was hxed. Should the accused be 
declared innocent, the fee was to come out of the United States 
Treasury ; but if found guilty, the convict was compelled to help 
to increase the store of the Federal informer. 

If the colored race had been worthy of freedom, no such ex- 
treme measures, as the Freedmen's Bureau and the Civil Rights 
Bill, need have been resorted to by their emancipators to secure 
them in their liberty. No such legislation was ever required to 
bolster up and support the liberty of the serfs of Europe, when 
public opinion concurred in the propriety of according them their 
freedom. But the Northern anti-slavery zealots were aware that 
thev had forced negro emancipation before its time ; and had 
violated all precedent and history in their unconstitutional efforts 
to make freemen of barbarians. They knew that they had sub- 
verted the foundations of society in one-half of the Union, in 



*Andrew Johnson was reported in the pubhc joui-nals to have made 
this remark whilst acting as Military Governor of Tennessee, 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 431 

opposition to the cautionary protests of tlie wisest statesmen of 
America, and the universal intelligence of the South ; and to 
sustain their unrighteous acts, laws must be enacted by Congress 
to counteract Southern revulsion, and practically enchain the 
educated and enlightened intellect of that section. If the Con- 
stitution had hitherto j)roved no barrier to the wild advances of 
fanatical legislators, could it be hoped that it would be sucli 
when the South was crushed beneath the heel of Jacobinical 
fury ? And although the Statutes of the United States and the 
journals of Congress afforded no instance of such legislation 
ever having been jDroposed, the revolutionary leaders hesitated 
not to introduce and sustain in the Civil Rights Jiil], a law, that 
invaded the reserved rights of the States, and trampled upon the 
compacts of the Constitution. The whole force of the party 
machinery was brought to the support of this bill, and it passed 
both Houses of Congress by heavy majorities. Even the un- 
just ejection* of legally elected Congressmen was resorted to 
for the purpose of having a two -thirds majority in each House, 
in order to counterpoise the Presidential veto, and j)revent it 
from proving an insuperable obstacle in the way of radical 
advance. 

But the President came again to the defense of the Constitu- 
tion, and vetoed the Civil Rights Bill March 27th, 1866, basing 
his reasons therefor, upon sound democratic arguments. The 
demagogue, impelled by the monitions of duty, was endeavoring 
to throw aside his hypocritical robes, and array himself with the 
pure men of the country, with whom his reason allied him. As 
a vile politician, however, he had mingled with the social dregs 
against which his natural tastes revolted ; and now, like his pro- 
totype, he was desirous of breaking with the repulsive alliance. 
He declared in his Message, vetoing the bill, that " it is 
another step or rather stride, towards the centralization and the 

*John p. Stockton, a legally elected Democratic Senator from New Jer- 
sey, was debarred from his seat in the United States Senate, by the 
revolutionary men who controlled that body. The Committee of Seven, 
appointed to pass upon his case, five of whom were Republicans, reported 
in his favor ; but partisan feeling and interest, both demanded the ex- 
clusion of every Democrat upon the most frivolous pretences. The Sen- 
ator was, as a consequence, ousted from his seat. Daniel W. Voorhees, 
John D. Baldwin and James Brooks, Democratic Members of the Lower 
House, were likewise ejected from their eeats in the Thirty-ninth Con- 
gress, for partisan purposes. 



43.3 A REVIEW OF THE 

concentration, of all legislative powers in the National Govern- 
ment." 'But lie forgot that he, more perhaps than any other 
single individual, had helped to strengthen the party of centrali- 
zation, which from their iirst seizure of power, had been invading 
the Constitution ; and having up to this time been permitted un- 
checked to tread upon it, their regard for it could not be expected 
to revive at the dictation of one who, with themselves, had proved 
false to its most sacred mandates. Gamblers and thieves do not 
heed the pious monitions of one of their own number ; sudden 
conversions being ever criticised with considerable scrutiny. 

When the news of the veto by President Johnson, of the 
Civil Eights Bill, was spread over the North, a torrent of rage 
and vituperation poured forth more terrific and violent, even, 
than that which followed his first refusal to accompany the revo- 
lution in its late developments. He was denounced, as a tyrant 
and usurper ; and numerous were the demands made by the in- 
cendiary press to impeach and remove him from the high ofiice, 
which he was accused, of intending to prostitute in the interest 
of the discomfitted rebels. The veto was taken up on the dth 
of April, 18G6, in the Senate ; and was defended in masterly 
argiiments by Senators Johnson, Hendricks, Guthrie and other 
able men ; and the unconstitutionality of the bill was particu- 
larly dwelt upon by these patriotic Statesmen. Being, however, 
a favorite measure of the revolutionary party, it obtained the 
requisite two-thirds majority of that body. It was next taken 
up in the House on the 9th of the same month, and secured a 
like majority ; and thus became a law without the Presidential 
signature. 

From the period of the President's veto of the CivU Eights 
Bill, a steady and persistent war was waged with the Executive 
Department of the Government. Indeed, from the commence- 
ment of this session of Congress, the whole of the legislation of 
almost whatever character it might consist, was made subsidiary 
by Thaddens Stevens and the other radicals, to the attainment of 
the cne great object, universal suifrage. Henry J. Eaymond,'^ 
Editor of the New York Times, himself a Eepublican Member of 
the House, spoke in his paper of the object of his party, as follows : 

*Heniy J. Raymond belonged to that wing of the Republican party 
which sustained President Johnson in his policy of restoration of the 

Southern States. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. 433 

" Universal negro suffrage, as the condition sine qua non, of the re. 
Gtoration of tlie Union, is now and has been from the beginning of the 
session, the grand goal and objects of all their (the Republican revolu- 
tionists) efforts. They have cloaked it more or less, partly from policy 
and partly from fear ; but the time is drawing nigh when they can cloak 
it no longer. The whole subject of restoration was first put into the 
hands of the Eeconstruction CommiLtee, there to await the manipulations 
necessary for success. Each House was pledged to admit no member 
from the South, until that Committee should have reported, and until 
final action should have been taken by both Houses on that report. This 
tied Congress hand and foot, and left the field perfectly clear for the 
grand campaign. Every attempt that has been made to draw attention 
to the case of Tennessee to the returns and qualifications of Southern 
members to the testimony reported to the Committee, or to any other 
general branch of this subject, has been temporarily squelched, by being 
sent under the Sj)eaker's ruling, to the Committee of Fifteen, and undsr 
the injunct ion of secresy to this hour. 

"Meantime all the talk and all tha excitement that had been raised 
about constitutional amendments, equality of civil rights, status of the 
Rebel States, &c., &c., has been sinaply dust thrown in the eyes of the 
public to cover the approach to the grand fundamental, indispensable 
principle of universal negro suffrage, as the condition, without which 
no Southern State should ever be admitted to the Union. This is the 
secret of all the elaborate legal endeavors to prove that the Union is 
destroyed— that the States went out of it, and that they can get back 
only on such conditions as Congress may prescribe. This was the reason 
why Stevens entitled them conquered States, deprived of all rights, ex- 
cluded from the protection of the Constitution, and to be dealt witli as 
conquered subjects at the sovei-eign will and pleasure of the conquerors- 
This was the object of the studied legal argument of Mr. Shellaberger, 
in support of the doctrine of State suicide, and of his more recent effort 
to prove that if even, in the Union, they may rightfully be held to have 
forfeited all the rights of citizenship under the Constitution. The feeble 
but still more zealous efforts of Hart, Ward, Holmes and other radical 
members from this side, have all aimed at the same thing — namely, to 
lay a foundation for demanding, at the hands of the South, universal 
negro suffrage as the condition of restoration. 

"The plan does not work quite to their liking; some of the more 
timid among them begin to doubt whether it is quite safe. Its strength 
with the people does not quite equal their anticipations. TJie President 
is more obstinate in his fidelity to the principles and platform of the 
Union party than they expected. The country is not convinced that the 
South is out of the Union, that their people are conquered subjects, or 
that Congress has the right to force universal negro suffrage upon 
them. 

" Mr. Stevens announced, very early in the session, that he and the 
friends of universal negro suffrage were strong enough, by uniting with 
he Democrats, to defeat any kind of negro suffrage. * * * That 
radicals on the Reconstruction Committee, will follow the policy marked 



431 A REVIEW OF THE 

out by Wendell Phillips,* who is really the leader of the radical move- 
ment. They will report in favor of universal negro suffrage as the only 
basis on which the Union shall be restored — as the only condition on 
which the Southern States shall ever again be represented in Congress — 
and they will require these hesitating, halting gentlemen to walk 
up to the mark and vote with them in its support. * * * They 
have excluded Tennessee in spite of the conviction of three-fourths of 
the House, that her members ought to be admitted. They have repeat- 
edly passed resolutions insulting the President, in spite of a professed 
desire for harmony between the Executive and Legislative Departments 
of the Government. And they have passed against the veto by over- 
whelming majorities, and with loud applause a bill (the Civil Rights 
Bill), vdiich a majority of their own faction admitted by necessary im- 
plication to be utterly beyond the constitutional authority of Congress. 
And all this has been done by party drill and party meuaco.'j- 

Senator Stewart condemned the inconsistency of his party in 

the following words : 

" Do you think if you had avowed that negro suffrage was your ulti- 
matum, that j'ou knew the States were not in the Union, that your pur- 
pose was not to keep them in the Union, but to govern them as Territo- 
ries, that you could have drawn the loyal masses of the North to this 
terrible conflict. Show me the platforms upon which this fight was 
made ; show me the resolutions of Congress ; show me the declarations 
that put in issue the question of negro suffrage, which is now delaying 
the peace and disturbing the country." J 

The District of Columbia was the first place upon which the 
revolutionists determined to force negro suffrage. A bill was 
introduced into the House for this purpose in the first session of 
the Thirty-ninth Congress, and after a warm discussion received 
the approval of that body, and was remitted to the Senate for its 
concurrence. But the cautious Senatorial House, though equally 
radical as the representative assemblage, feared to concur in this 
measure until the elections of 1866 had been successfully tided 
over; although it had virtually committed itself to the same 
principle, when the organization of the Territory of Montana had 
been before it. But prudence deteired the political leaders of 
the revolutionary party from too openly committing themselves 
to negro suffrage, being well aware that too free a committal 
upon this question would jeopard their success, as partisans, in 
the coming political campaign. The eyes of the deluded North- 



* President Johnson, in his speech to the citizens of Washington City, 
on the 23d of February, 1866, characterized Thaddeus Stevens, Charles 
Snmner and Wendell Phillips, as the three leaders of the radical party. 

f New York Times, April 27th, 1866. 

X Speech of January 18, 1866. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 43c 

ern people must not be too fully opened to the designs of men, 
who only strove to rivet party chains at the expense of traditional 
institutions. 

The Thirty-ninth Congress having delegated all authority over 
the admission of Senators and Members from the Confederate 
States, to the Committee of Fifteen, on reconstruction, awaited 
with humble submission the decrees of this Central Directory, 
In the meantime this Committee, under the Chairmanship of 
Mr. Stevens, now become the recognized leader of his party, 
busied itself in taking testimony concerning the condition of the 
Southern States, the temper of their people, the details of crime, 
the action of magistrates, and the general character and tendency 
of their officers. JSTo member from any Southern State was ad- 
mitted, or even allowed to bring his credentials to the notice and 
judgment of either the Senate or House of Representatives. 
"Without the least courtesy of recognition, they were remitted 
with their passports to the august Sanhedrim of revolutionary 
domination. The local State Governments already in operation 
in the South, were ignored ; and communications from the Gov- 
ernors elected by their people, under the authority of those ap- 
pointed by the President, were not received ; and these officers, 
themselves, were even denied receptions. 

Whilst this Central Committee was engaged with its special 
labors, Congress was by no means idle, Numerous bills were 
introduced and referred to their respective committees ; all of 
them as varied as the mental constitutions of their several pro- 
posers. Bills were submitted for erecting Territorial Govern- 
ments in the Southern States ; for confiscating the real estate 
and other property of the Southern people ; for annulling the 
action of the President in granting pardons; for excluding from 
the exercise of political rights the great mass of the Southern 
citizens ; for dividing among the freed slaves the lands of the 
Southern planters ; for conferring the elective franchise upon the 
emancipated blacks of the South ; and in general for accomplish- 
ing all such changes in tlie structure of the Government, as the 
authors of these measures respectively, found most consistent 
with their ideas of an Utopian Republic. Numerous amend 
ments of the Constitution, some of them of the most sweeping 
character, were presented and pressed upon Congress and the 
attention of the country. Resolutions were adopted to hold the 



436 A REVIEW OF THE 

Southern States under absolute military rule during the pleasure 
of Congress. The general scope of all the attempted action of 
that body, was to concentrate suj^rerae authority over the States 
in the Federal Government ; and all power in that Government 
in the hands of Congress. 

After many long and heated discussions in Committee and in 
both Houses of Congress, an amendment* to the Constitution 
was at length agreed upon, and submitted for the consideration 
of the States on the 13th of June, 1866. This amendment con- 
ferred: First — an equality of civil rights. Second — Federal 
representation, based substantially upon voters instead of popula- 
tion. Declared — Third — the exclusion from office of certain 
classes of rebels. Proclaimed — -Fourth — the public debt as in- 
violate, and forbade payment for emancipated slaves. Fifth 
— gave Congress power to cany these provisions into effect 
This amendment was by no means what the radicals desired. 
But they were doomed to the necessity of presenting something, 
and what they desired was as yet too extreme for the timid 
party slaves. Mr. Stevens made no concealment that the amend- 
ment failed to meet his views on the question of negro suffrage; 
but he declared it the best in his view that could then be secui-ed. 
It was believed by many that the interest of the Southern peo- 
ple would overcome their prejudices to the negro, and that they 
would linaliy grant to him the right of suft'rage. But if nothing 
else would have prevented the Southern States from accepting 
the proposed amendment, the known insincerity that accompanied 
its presentation would have been sufficient. Though endorsed 
by Congress as just and desirable, its adoption by any Southern 
State, or by the M'hole of them, was not presented as a condition 
of re-admission to representation in Congress ; but that matter 
was left open as before to the constitutional discretion of each 
House. A¥endell Phillips, the great moi'al leader of Abolition- 
ism, in his speech of July 4th, 1866, disclosed the designs of the 
revolutionary leaders in submitting the amendment. He said : 

"The Republican party to-day repeats the same experiment, and 
hopes it willbe successful. What the leaders in Congress think, is that 
the amendment will be rejected. * * * What then does 

Stevens, what does Boutwell, what does Wade, what does Sumner ex- 
pect ? When the elections are over and the amendment defeated, what 
do they expect? Why, they expect that the Republican party, victorious 

* This is what was afterwards ratified as Amendment No, li. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 437 

at the ballot-box, unfettered by the adoption of the amendment, will 
float back into Congress, able to pass an act that shall give the ballot to 
the negro and initiate an amendment to the Constitution which shall 
secure it to him. They hope, they expect, that after the defeat of the 
amendment in the fall elections, the party will return to Congress 
stronger than it stands to-day. Tiiey do not want the amendment 
accepted. The worst possible news that Thaddeus Stevens could hear, 
would be, that the amendment was adopted. The most unwelcome news 
you could carry to George Boutwell, of Groton, would be that the 
amendment had been ratified. They neither expect it nor wish it. It is 
a party move. I do not disgrace it when I say it is a party trick to tide 
over the elections and save time — nothing else ; to serve a purpose — 
to get rid of an emergency — to tide over the summer — to get on the other 
side of the elections — that is all."* 

On May 22(1, 1866, in the House of Representatives, a bill was 
reported to continue in force the Freedmen's Bureau for two 
years. Some features of this measure had been altered from 
the last one, which had failed in its passage because of the 
Presidential veto; and it also embodied the provisions of the 
Civil Kights Bill. It passed both Houses with some modifica- 
cations, after its introduction, but again failed to receive the sig- 
nature of the Executive, and for very similar reasons to those 
which he had assigned as causing his disapproval of the former 
Freedmen's Bill. This time, however, the opposition to the 
President mustered in full strength, and the new bill excogitated 
out of pretended charitable regard for the negro race, was passed 
in both Houses over the veto, and enrolled upon the statute 
books of the nation. 

But Congress, though recognizing Thaddeus Stevens as its 
intellectual leader, feared to follow him in his mad scheme for 
confiscating Southern property, and distributing it amongst the 
emancipated slaves. This stretch of communism was too nause- 
ating for many who obeyed him as lord and master in every 
other particular. Many other propositions that found individual 
advocates in one or other House of Congress, failed likewise to 
receive such approval as to give them the character of laws. 
Although warmly urged, out of opposition to President Johnson 
no enactments were passed for ignoring or superseding the local 
governments of the Southern States ; for organizing Territories 
upon their soil ; for disfranchising the white people, or for con- 
ferrins: the right of suffrage on the colored race. These were 



*Nevv York World, July 7th, 1868. 



433 A REVIEW OF THE 

all regarded as tDO daring innovations to be as yet hazarded. 
Time must do its work before anj of these bold measures could 
with safety receive strong party support. The Representatives 
to Congress from Tennessee were admitted just before the close 
of this session ; but this right was simply extended to them as a 
blind to deceive the unwary in the coming Autumn elections. 

The other action of this Congress, also portrayed its partisan 
predilection. The Internal Revenue Taxation, before the close 
of this session, underwent a modification at the dictation of the 
revolutionary rulers. An unheard-of excise of three cents per 
pound, was imposed upon cotton ; and two dollars a gallon on 
whiskey. The Maine liquor law reformers were now in ecstasies. 
The millenium was surely advancing with rapid strides, No fair 
and equitable deduction, however, was made in the odious and 
unjust tariff, which special interests had originally procured to be 
enacted. Corporations and railroad monopolies came in with 
their sweeping demands ; and an obsequious Congress hesitated 
not to donate vast tracts of the public domain in behalf of wild 
enterprises; which public property should rather have been hus- 
banded with care, as a fund to help in the reduction of the public 
debt, and pay the expenses of the Government. The members 
of this Congress, whilst displaying an almost total disregard of 
the public interest, were by no means neglectful of their ov/n 
affairs. As shrewd private financiers, they determined that a salary 
of five thousand dollars per annum would more swell their purses 
than the three thousand they already were receiving. A Kew 
York editor, himself a Member of the House, spoke of the par- 
tisan and financial action of this Congress as follows : 

" Its genei'al action, in matters of expense, has been lavish, where 
party interests were involved ; and its general temper throughout the 
session has indicated a pretty close regard for seeming the supremacy 
of the Union {Abolition) party in the iuture."* 

*New York Times, July 30, 1866. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 439 



CHAPTER XXVIIL 

THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGN OF 1866. 

The break of President Johnson with the radicals, led to the 
behef that a new part_y, with the Executive as the central figure, 
might be organized, able to wrest power from the hands of the 
latter. The Democratic party was not in a condition to contest 
successfully upon the political arena with its old opponent. It 
had been deco3'ed by false leaders, in violation of its j)rinclpies, 
and in opposition to the advice of its wisest members, into the 
endorsement of the war against the Southern people; and in 
doing so it played the role of duplicity, inasmuch as its leaders 
and thinkers were well known to entertain the belief that no 
constitutional warrant existed for making war against the seceded 
States of the South. Upon the close of the rebellion, it was no 
difficult matter, therefore, for the crafty demagogues of the Re- 
publican party to affix, as a stigma, the brand of seeming dis- 
loyalty upon the brow of the political opposition ; who were 
vituperated as pretending to support the war for the Union, when 
they were known to be hostile in sentiment to its prosecution. 
It was not difficult to cite the utterances of representative Demo- 
crats, who, prior to the outbreak of hostilities and down to their 
close, had declared the war to have been an unconstitutional 
invasion of the rights of the Southern people. Might, never- 
theless, triumphed over the Constitution ; and its defense, of 
necessity, became treason. The Democracy had been quilty of 
no higher offense than defending in its letter and spirit the 
compacts of the fathers ; but the revolutionists, having succeeded 
in overthrowing the old constitutional barriers, and being now in 
possession of the authority of government, towered aloft as the 
patriots of the new order of affairs. Those members of the 
Democratic party in the ISTorth, the most sincere and conscientious 
men in its ranks, who had been conspicuous from their opposition 
to the war, were after its close viewed by their fellows as danger- 



440 A REVIEW OF THE 

oris leaders in the future political contests of the countiy. Men 
must henceforth lead the party to victory, who had either favored 
the war against tlie South, or who had been so cautious in their 
utterances as not openly to have committed themselves against it. 
The pure Democrats had martyred themselves upon the altar of 
principle ; politic leaders now stepped forward, seized hold of 
the party reins, and marshalled the organization in accordance 
with the perverted ideas which the revolution introduced. It 
was fraud truckling to ignorance, and demonstrated the demor- 
alizing tendency of politics when the moral and intellectual 
leaders of a people, from any cause, have been stricken down. 

Early in the year 1866, a political association, called the 
National Union Club, was organized in the City of Washington, 
by Republicans, who coincided with the President in their views, 
and was designed to be the germ of similar organizations through- 
out the whole Union. The basis of the organization was expressed 
in a series of resolutions, denying the right of sesession; ex- 
pressing confidence in the ability, patriotism and statesmanship 
of the President ; endorsing the resolution of Congress of the 22d 
of July, 1861 ; asserting from the Chicago platform of 1860 the 
importance of ?naintaining the rights of the Spates; declaring the 
constitutional right of the several States to prescribe the qualifica- 
tions of electors therein ; that the war having closed, the rights 
of the States should be maintained inviolate ; that the States 
were entitled to representation, and all loyal members should bo 
admitted into Congress without unnecessary delay ; that no com- 
promise should be made by bartering " universal amnest}^ " for 
" universal suffrage ; "'' and endorsing cordially the restoration 
policy of President Johnson as in harmony with that of President 
Lincoln. 

This club was subsequently united with another of the same 
character in "Washington ; and a National Union Executive Com- 
mittee likewise appointed. One of the first acts of the National 
Union Club, was to give an evening serenade, on the 23d of 
May, to the President and members of his Cabinet, in order to 
elicit an expression of opinion upon the existing political issues 
from the advisers of the President. A part of the Cabinet fully 
committed themselves to the Presidential plan of reconstruction, 
yet some of them declined to do so. William H. Seward, the 
Secretary of State, and Hugh McCullough, the head of the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 441 

Treasury Department, without reserve, endorsed tlie views of 
President Johnson. 

Emboldened by the endorsement given to the President's 
policy by the Members of his Cabinet, itself the selection of his 
l^redecessor, his friends and admirers believed that the task of 
organizing a new party upon Executive popularity, would be no 
difficult one. A man who, in his own State, had resisted the 
M'aves of secession ; had obtained the support of the Republican 
party ; been elevated by the votes of the people to the second 
highest office in the nation ; and now transferred by constitu- 
tional succession to the highest place of power; must unques- 
tionably, as was conceived, have a strength with the people of 
considerable magnitude. The managers, therefore, with sagacious 
adroitness, untertook the task of organizing the Presidential fol- 
lowers into a political party that might strive with probability of 
success, before the Northern people, in the Congressional elec- 
tions of 1866. A number of leading Republicans, Members of 
the Senate and House of Representatives, lent themselves to the 
undertaking, which aimed at nothing less than obtaining the con- 
trol of the Government of the country. The Executive Com- 
mittee of the National Union Club, issued on the 25th of June, 
a call for a National Convention, of at least two delegates from 
each Congressional District of all the States, and four at large 
from each of them, to meet in the City of Philadelphia, en the 
14th of August. 

The probability of building up a party that might be able to 
resist that one which sustained the revolutionary Congress, was 
based upon the belief that the Democracy would co-operate with 
any organization which promised the overthrow of radicalism. 
In this expectation, the friends of the President were not mis- 
taken. Forty-one Democratic Members of Congress signed an 
address to the people of the United States, in which they de- 
clared their cordial approval of the call for the National Union 
Convention, and their endorsement of the principles which it 
enunciated. They urged the people of each State, Territory and 
Congressional District, to promptly select wise, moderate and 
conseiwative men to represent them in the Philadelphia Con- 
vention. The reasons alleged by the signers of this appeal, 
were that dangers threatened the Constitution ; that the citadel 
of the public Kberties was assailed; that it was essential to 



4i3 A REVIEW OF THE 

ITational Union, that the rights, the dignity and the equality of 
the States, including the right of representation and the exclusive 
riffht to control their own domestic concerns under the Constitu- 
tion should be preserved ; that eleven States were unjustly ex- 
cluded from the National Council, and that whilst denied repre- 
sentation, laws affecting their highest interests, have been passed 
without their consent, and in utter disregard of the fundamental 
principles of free government. 

The action of President Johnson, with reference to the Freed- 
men's Bureau and the Civil Kights Bill, turned the Democratic 
party in his favor, as it was perceived that he exhibited a greater 
regard for the Constitution than did his enemies. And, although 
men of that organization could by no means justif}^ the course 
he had pursued in sustaining the war against the South, and the 
other numerous broaches of the Constitution, which had been 
perpetrated with his acquiescence ; yet the politicians were will- 
ing to ignore the past, in hope of a brilliant and successful 
future. But this was again, to repeat the original error, which 
the party liaJ co.nmitted in endorsing the prosecution of the 
war for the restoration of the Union. The first error, from time 
to time, necessitated repetitions of the same ; all of which would 
have been averted had the Democratic party from the first stood 
firmly by its cardinal principle of State Sovereignty,. and refused 
to permit an armed blow to have been struck in behalf of the 
Federal Union. As the Union had died in secession, it should 
have been permitted to be resurrected by the same life-giving 
process of evolution, as it were, by means of which it had been 
created. That process was consent^ the only one that can origi- 
nate, preserve or reconstruct the republican government. Mon- 
archical republicanism may, it is true, rest upon the sword ; but 
it is impossible that any other kind should do so. 

But, as the Democratic party by its desertion of principle, in 
supporting coercion as a means of restoring the Union, had 
rendered the war popular with the unreflecting masses of the 
North, how was it to regain power for a time upon old issues, 
save by the basest conceivable hypocrisy? It was necessary that 
its old tried and trusted leadei-s, who had never bowed the knee 
to the false gods of abolitionism should be ostracised, and new 
ones selected who had trampled upon the Constitution of their 
country, as if it were the waste paper of the highway. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. ■iiS 

Andrew Jolinson, in the movement which cuhninated in the 
Philadelphia Convention, was viewed as a leader under whose 
banner, as it was believed, the Democracy might again ride to 
victory. In the estimation, however, of reflecting men, this 
hope seemed baseless and chimerical. If the war was justifiable, 
then the party that had prosecuted it to its close was the one 
to administer upon its eifects, and gather the fruits of conquest. 
"Was it to be supposed that the people of the country, who be- 
lieved in the nationality of the Government, would entrust the 
adjudication of the affairs which the victory over the South 
placed within their power, to men who were suspected of having 
entertained sentiments of hostility to the war and its ultimate 
objects ? A superficial knowledge of human natoi'e alone, was 
sufficient to disprove such a supposition. 

As the Democratic party, however, in 1866, was unable to re- 
trieve its error, for the same reason that induced its original com- 
mission ; it left this duty to be undertaken in the future, and to 
be accomplished during the same period when the republican 
union shall be in process of restoration (if this ever be possible,) 
out of the chaos of revolutionary despotism; and by the 
only method which modern Christian civilization recognizes; 
unless prior to the happening of this event the ship of State 
shall have been finally wafted within the whirpool gulph of 
a crushing absolutism. But the party of Jefferson and Cal- 
houn, was led by false guides to the footstool of Executive 
power; and through hope of political triumph, made to endoree 
results which had been attained by means of the most iniquitous 
character. It was believed, nevertheless, by conservative Ee- 
publicans and politic Democrats, that the convention to assemble 
in Philadelphia, on the 14th of August, would be able to unite 
an opposition against the revolutionarj^ P^^ty, that had broken 
the Union into fragments ; and which, in attempting to re-cement 
these by force, was only further pressing them into the lowest 
depths of social perdition. 

The efforts that led to the holding of the Philadelphia Con- 
vention, were the first endeavors since the war, that were fairly 
made to bridge the chasm of bluod that seperated the two sec- 
tions of our country. Difiiculties encompassed the situation 
upon all sides, and the work of civil war, only began to present 
its terrible visage to the reflective intellect of the nation, when 



444 A REVIEW OF THE 

the leaders set themselves to the task of bringing the people and 
sections upon a common platform. As the convention to assemble? 
was to represent the sentiments of all those who were hostile to 
the revolutionists, a difficulty presented itself as regards the 
delegates, who should be accredited as members to the harmoniz- 
ing assemblage. Democrats and Conservative Republicans, both 
claimed the right of being represented in the convention. To 
obviate any misunderstanding that might exist, as to the parties 
entitled to be re23resented in that bod}^, it was recommended by 
the Committee of the National Union Club, that two delegates 
from each Congressional District should be selected from the 
supporters of Lincoln and Johnson in 1S64, and the same num- 
ber from their opponents. In the Southern States, a correspond- 
ing number of delegates was permitted to be chosen by the 
people generally, who accepted the principles of the call. Both 
coercion and peace Democrats were elected as delegates ; but it 
was feared by the politic manipulators, in view of the popular 
war sentiment which prevailed, that the presence of C. L. Val- 
landigham and other Northerners of his school, would injure the 
influence of the convention. This fear, however, was simply 
the result of that species of cowardice, of which republican govern- 
ments are wonderfully prolific ; and which doubtless germinates 
the demoralization that leads ultimately to their overthrow. If 
public opinion be wrong, that government which is sustained by 
it must submerge, or a power must exist somewhere, pure, free 
and independent, and one which is competent to denounce and 
correct the error. Can this ever be found of sufficent strength 
where leading men truckle to public prejudices, and only seek 
their own elevation at the expense of public prosperity and 
happiness ? 

Public attention for a time was almost entirely engrossed with 
the movement, which had for its object, the assembling of the 
Philadelphia Convention. It was believed that this convention 
would prove to be the line of demarcation, between the Executive 
and the Congressional modes of reconstruction ; and that it, 
more than any other event, would nationalize the Presidential 
following. It occasioned the first rent in the Cabinet ; and ena- 
bled President Johnson to surround himself with advisers, who 
sympathized, in the main, with, his views of governmental policy. 
Gn the day preceding the assembling of the convention, W. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 445 

Dennison, Postmaster- General, tendered his resignation, wliicb 
was accepted, and A. AV. Randall appointed as his successor. 
James Speed, the Attornfey-General, also tendered his resigna- 
tion, and was succeeded by Henrj'- Stanberj. Mr. Harlan, after- 
wards resigned the post of Secretary of the Interior, and O. II. 
Browning was substituted in his stead. The resiffnino; members 
of the Cabinet retired from it mainly because, differing from the 
President, they were unwilling, when interrogated by a commit- 
tee, to lend their sanction to the call for the convention. 

"When the delegates assembled in Philadelphia, Republicans 
and war Democrats were permitted to be the leading movers in 
the organization and manipulation of the representative body. 
General John A. Dix was made temporary Chairman, a former 
Democrat, but one who had sustained the war against the South 
Avitli the most ardent enthusiasm. James E. Doolittle, a Repub- 
lican Senator in Congress, from Wisconsin, was elected perma- 
nent President of the convention ; and Edgar A. Cowan, a 
Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, was appointed as Chair- 
man of the Committee on Resolutions. Henry J. Raymond, a 
Republican member of the House of Representatives, and editor 
of the l!^ew York Times, was the author of the address which 
was adopted by the convention, and which purported to be a 
succinct expression of the sentiment of that body. 

In this convention, the earliest effort was made, since the war, 
to harmonize the conflicting sentiments . of the people of the 
Korth and those of the South ; and the difficulty of doing so, 
was for the first time fully realized. That the war had left two 
radically antagonistic peoples, loomed ujd into prominence in this 
convention ; and in what manner to unite these, into an harmo- 
nious whole, was a question that quietly engaged the attention 
of the assembled representatives. The South appeared in the 
convention, through her delegates, and did so apparently by con- 
sent ; but the coercive arm of the Government compelled this 
seeming acquiescence ; for no representatives would have ap- 
peared from that section, if full freedom had been' the privilege 
of her people. She had struck for independence, but the armed 
lesrions of the North baffled her in its attainment. How could 
her representative men, having supported the rebellion with the 
most enthusiastic earnestness, cherish another desire, save to be 
free from a people, who had sown the seeds of sectional strife in 



443 A REVIEW OF THE 

the land ; and waged a godless and unconstitutional war against 
the rights, liberties and institutions of her people? But, 
though vanquished, the South nevertheless remained a separate, 
individual nation, whose feelings, sjnupathies and aspirations 
were discordant from those of the North, and will so remain 
throughout coming ages. Iler inhabitants held in recollection a 
cause not to be forgotten ; the memory of her heroes, martyrs, 
and fellow braves were imperishably inscribed upon her mental 
tablets; and her separate tombs and mausoleums were conse- 
crated shrines, to which pious pilgrimages were wont to be 
undertaken. 

The people of the Korth equally had their heroes and sympa- 
thies, which the struggle had engendered. A severance of 
boundary would no more have alienated the North and South 
from each other, than had the conflict done ; and possibly the 
future may determine that wisdom, in the interests of free 
government, dictated tliat the metes and bounds of division even 
then, should amicably have been struck. One iniquity at least, 
with all its following evils, the nation and civilization would have 
been spared. That iniquity was reconstruction. But the two 
sections having met in the Philadelphia Convention, endeavored 
to evolve harmonious views. A series of resolutions were 
adopted, intended to meet Northern prejudice, some of which 
outraged Southern and he nest democratic sentiment ; and dis- 
' closed the difficulty that existed of ever again uniting the anti- 
podes of American opinion in a common Republic, Could the 
Southern delegates endorse State coercion and the justice of a 
war that had beggarded their people l But policy demanded 
that they do so. Could they declare that the war had maintained 
the authority of the Constitution, when Thaddeus Stevens, the 
radica,l leader, made no concealment that that instrument had 
been repudiated by his party ? Politicians, however, claimed 
this of them. Could they pronounce that the Confederate debt 
should be cancelled, and that of their conquerors liquidated ? 
Honesty bore as weighty upon their consciences as upon those of 
the triumphant revolutionists. Again, must they forget their 
crippled soldiers, who had borne their colors upon many a- crim- 
soned field ; be denied the privilege of bestowing some legal 
alms for their relief ; and be forced to contribute for the support 
of those who had overthrown the Constitution whilst carrying 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 447 

the false banner of Union and liberty. JS^one, except cowards 
and deceivers, could exact all this of them. In extorting it, 
however, though in the house of their political friend, vassaldom 
and conquest, in all their vividness, loomed up before the assem- 
bled representatives of the conquered South. This itself was 
sufficient to assure thinking men that the republican government 
of the Fathers had ended its career. 

Andrew Johnson and his reconstruction policy were endorsed 
by the Philadelphia Convention, which was one of the main ob- 
jects that induced the politic managers originally to call it. 
As a present issue, the Presidential plan of restoring the Southern 
States to Federal autonomy, was far preferable to that advocated 
by the radicals. Being a fruit of conquest, however, it could by 
no means meet the full approval of the people of the South ; but 
as their condition necessitated its acceptance, (in order, as they 
hoped, to attain Federal representation,) or have a worse than this 
forced upon them ; they embraced it simply as a choice of evils. 
Andrew Johnson had not been elected President by the Southern 
people, nor by the ISTorthern Democracy. But they both lent 
their support to his Administration, because the rebellion being 
ended, he more strongly than his enemies, defended the Consti- 
tution ; and desired that no further invasions of State Sovereignty 
be permitted. In concurring with the President, the Southern 
people were able to do so, as conquered subjects ; but not as free- 
men and equals in a Constitutional Pepublic. 

In order to counteract the possible influence of the Philadel- 
phia Convention, a number of persons styling themselves Union 
men of the South, were induced on July 4th, to issue a call for a 
convention of Southern Loyalists, to meet in the city of Brotherly 
Love in the month of September. Little doubt can exist, that 
the influence which prompted this movement, largely emenated 
from the radicals of the North, who believed that it would 
strengthen their influence with their political followers. The 
call evinced entire sympathy with the revolutionary Congress, and 
took decided grounds in opposition to the reconstruction of the 
Southern States upon the Presidential plan. Equality before the 
law was strongly urged ; and also, that no State should be recog. 
nized as a legitimate government, until impartial protection 
would be incorporated in the organic law. The demand for 
negro suffrage was as yet withheld, as the revolutionary party 



4i8 A REVIEW OF THE 

was not quite prepared to carry tliis clearly printed npon their 
banners in the approaching campaign. But it was already in- 
scribed in dark declarations, well understood by the initiated few, 
who directed thought, and managed in their interests the unin- 
doctrinated masses. 

A marked contrast as to Southern membership, was visible 
between the late Johnson Convention, and that of the Loyalists. 
The latter was made up in a great measure of self-appointed 
delegates,* who appeared neither having Southern homes nor 
constituencies to represent. In the former convention, on the 
contrary, the wealth and intelligence of the Southern States were 
represented. But a small proportion of the loyal delegates from 
the South were men of distinction or political influence. Ex- 
Attorney-General Speed, Governors Brownlow, of Tennessee, 
and Fletcher, of Missouri, John Minor Botts, of Yirginia, A. J. 
Hamilton, of Texas and a few others, made up the notabilities 
of the assemblage. But the quintesence of ribaldry and fanati- 
cism met together in the loyal bodj'. The first illustration of 
universal equality, upon a conspicuous scale in America, was 
given on this occasion, in the parading of the whites and blacks, 
arm in arm, to this convention. They freely mingled together, 
as demonstrative of the doctrines meant, soon to be inaugurated 
in practice. Frederick Douglass, the mulatto orator of the 
JSTorth, first received full recognition as the representative of his 
race, in this ring streaked and speckled body of demagogues. 

And although this convention of variegated hues was devoted 
in soul to negro suffrage, yet it feared so to declare itself. A 
considerable contest for a time raged in this mingled association, 
as to the propriety of crossing the Rubicon of their aspirations, 
without further delay. This party plunge was still dreaded by 
the Northern delegates, who had united with their loyalist 
friends ; and also by those representing Southern constituencies, 
who were fully conscious that the white sentiment of their dis- 
tricts, was almost unanimous against the extension of the ballot 
to the negro. John' Minor Botts, in the convention, ex]5ressed 
the belief that of thirty thousand white loyalists in Virginia, not 

*"The Philadelphia Loyalist Convention of 1866, was composed of 
Freedmen's Bureau agents, ex-sutlers, dischai'ged volunteer officers, New 
England schoolmasters, speculators and adventurers, who possibly have 
seen the South while they traveled in the track of war." New York 
World, September 17, 1866. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 449 

three hundred of them would sanction the bestowal of the right 
of suffrage upon the ignorant negroes. But for policy, such 
representatives as Mr. Botts would have been hissed bj the 
infuriates from the rostrum ; for it was the determination of these 
desperadoes to treat Southern opinion with the most studied in- 
difference. Anna Dickinson, the Abolition oratrix of the ISTorth, 
in her chiding address, glowingly delivered in the presence of 
the motley assemblage, declared that she " would tell the men of 
the convention that their great jparty from Maine to California 
was devoted to hlach sxiffrageP 

But the majority of the Southern loyalists being equally devoted 
advocates of negro suffrage, as Mr, Stevens and his extreme con- 
gressional followers, were unwilling to allow the adjournment of 
the many colored convention, without an expression of senti- 
ment on this question. Steadily continuing their pressure, the 
co-operative delegates from the IlTorth, being disinclined to com- 
mittal on this issue, withdrew from all ostensible connection with, 
the body. The more moderate loyalists from the South also 
followed these ; and the infuriated madmen were now left masters 
3f the situation, and allowed to wind up the proceedings of the 
lonvention. These prepared a series of resolutions, and adopted 
in address which contained the following language : 

" We declare that there can be no security for us or our children ; 
3here can be no safety against the fell spirit of slavery, now organized 
n the form of serfdom, unless the Government, by national and appro- 
priate legislation, enforced by national authority, shall confer on eveiy 
jitizen in the States we represent, the American birthright of impartial 
iUffrage and equality before the law. This is the one all sufficient 
•emedy." 

Whilst declining to commit themselves to neo^ro suffrage in 
L866, the revolutionary party strove to make the submitted con- 
stitutional amendment appear before the country as the issue of 
:he campaign. It was presented as a preferable reconstruction 
3olicy for the South, to that which had received the endorsement 
)f President Johnson. The National Committee of the party 
leclared "that Congress will restore the ten waiting States, if 
;hese States adopt the amendment." The Republican Conven. 
ion of the State of ITew York made the same declaration in its 
inundated platform of principles. The promises of these high 
Luthorities were uttered purely in the interest of party ; and 
vere calculated to attract voters who deemed the amendment as 



450 A REVIEW OF THE 

reasonable one for Southern acceptance. But tlie promises were 
altogether deceptions. Mr. Stevens and the leading men of his 
party in Congress, entertained no thought of admitting the 
Southern States to representation, even should the amendment 
be adopted by them. As if steering between Scylla and Charyb- 
dis, they had studied with care the temper of Northern senti- 
ment ; and framed an amendment which the people of their own 
section, owing to existing sectional hatred, would regard as fair 
and equitable ; and which those of the South were sure to reject 
upon principle. Congress positively refused to declare, that 
Southern Representatives should be admitted to their seats, in 
the event of their States ratifying the amendment. Leading 
organs of the Republican party asserted in strong tei'ms that the 
adoption of the amendment would not entitle the South to be 
rehabilitated in lier ancient regalia. The New York Lidejyen- 
dent, one of the influential papers of the party, said : 

"No leading Republican in Congress means to admit the ten waiting 
States, simply on the adoption of the amendment. These States are to 
be admitted on no conditions, short of the equal political rights of their 
loyal citizens without distinction of race. A reconstruction of the Union, 
on any other basis, would be a National dishonor. Until the rebel States 
can come back on this basis, they shall not come back at all." 

George II. Boutwell, of Massachusetts, an influential Republi- 
can, in a speech, said : 

"He did not intend to vote for the admission of either of the ten 
States, not at present represented in the Congress of the United States, 
until impartial suffrage was extended to all the people of those States."* 

The composition of parties varied in this campaign very tri- 
flingly from what they had done prior to and during the rebellion. 
The Democrats of the North, with a slight sprinkling of Con- 
servatives, made up the party which sustained the President ; 
and the Republicans that which stood by Congress. The bulk of 
the latter sympathized with the radical leaders of Congress ; and 
it was altogether natural that they should do so. They had 
favored the coercion of the South ; and this policy had been 
ultimately crowned with triumph, notwithstanding the vast diffl- 
culties that were necessary to be encountered. The body of a 
party always go as their leaders dictate ; and many of these 
unitedly must desert an organization before they can draw theii' 

*New York World, October 24, 1866. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 451 

old party followers with them. It was not Luther alone, who 
carried the protestant columns into revolt to their former eccle- 
siastical leaders ; but his schism became a success, because the 
professors of the Wittenberg University and the magnates of 
Saxony marched abreast with him. President Johnson had alone 
the approval of a few scattering Republican leaders, who with 
him, had sustained the war and its prosecution against the people 
of the South. 

It was clear to observers, that President Johnson had mainly 
thrown himself into the arms of the Democratic party, the consci- 
entious members of which had resisted upon principle the prosecu- 
tion of the war against the seceded States. As Northern senti- 
ment was at the time molded, this apparent change of attitude 
from one politcal extreme to the other, was itself sufficient to 
greatly damage the cause of the Executive. The revolution a:fy 
Congress was supported by the party which had returned as con- 
querors from the armed conflict ; M^hilst the President had in the 
North, chiefly as his supporters, those whose political pennant 
had been lowered in the dust; and who were also begrimmed with 
standing accusations of having been the disloyal confreres of the 
defeated foe. 

The campaign of 1866, in the different States, was a bitterly 
contested one. The memories of the war, as was natural, were 
dragged into the canvas, and made again to do their work of 
intensifying the hate of the people of the one section of the 
country against the other. The horrors of Andersonville, Libby, 
Bell Isle, Florence, and other Confederate prisons, were recalled 
in all their intensity, before the imaginations of the masses of the 
North ; and the cannon of New Orleans, Yicksburg and Charles- 
ton, were once more subsidized, by clear toned demagogues, in 
the interest of the radicals, as if the rebellion had not as yet 
been fully ended. The President was accused by his political 
enemies of designing to aid the rebels to the disadvantage of the 
Union, by securing their representation in Congress, before they 
were fitted to serve the interests of a common country. He was 
denounced as endeavoring to accomplish, by traitorous usurpation, 
what Jefferson Davis and his enrolled legions had failed to secure 
upon the battle field. Was he not (as was asked by the Repub- 
lican press) the betrayer of his associates, and the accepted advo- 
cate and defender of those who had sought to overthrow the 



433 A REVIEW OF THE 

liberty of tlieir country I From being the pretended friend of 
the Union, he has gone over to the enemy, and now seeks to intro- 
duce the Trojan horse amongst his countrymen, in order the 
more surely to effect the destruction, which his rebel associates 
failed to accomplish. Tell us not that the President is not in 
sj^mpathy with the defeated rebels. As evidence that he is, ,see 
the multitudes of blood-dyed traitors, to whom he has extended 
free and unconditional pardon for the crimes they have com- 
mitted ; and he is now striving by his plan of reconstruction to 
force these same rebels into the halls of Congress to outvote 
loyal men. See the Governors he has appointed ; hear the senti- 
ments of hostility they utter against the Congressional plan of 
reconstruction ; leam the infuriate hatred which they and their 
people cherish towards the freedmen of the South, who buckled 
on their armor and fought your battles for the preservation of 
the Union and the Constitution. Again, do you not see, to-day, 
the President in close sympathy with the men, who resisted by 
their speeches and influence, the war for the Union I Are not 
the anti-w^ar Democrats of the North, heartily supporting the 
President and his policy ? 

The above is a sample of the political abuse, which was heaped 
upon the President and those who sustained his reconstruction 
policy. Those supporting his viev/s were stigmatized as the 
Johnson-Davis party. The New Orleans and Memphis riots of 
this year, the legitimate products of Northern intermeddling, 
were admirable subjects for misrepresentation, and did their full 
share in exasperating the North against the prostrate South. 

Mr.' Stevens, in this campaign, performed his share of service 
in clouding, by sophistry, the issue before the country In his 
speech of September 4th, at Bedford, Pa,, and afterwards in 
Lancaster, he endeavored to defend his borrowed theory of State 
extinction ; and in support of his view, demagogically perverted 
the argument of Chief Justice Rufhn, of North Carolina, against 
the legality of the Constitution of his State, which had been 
amended subsequent to the war at the dictation of President 
Johnson, and in obedience to revolutionary sentiment. Having 
' used the argument of the Chief-Justice fcr a deceptions purpose, 
he next advocated a more thorough prostration of State authority, 
than that condemned, by advocating the reconstruction of the 
Confederate States, by means of so-calied enabling acts ; and in 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AlilERICA. 453 

this manner secure the enfranchisement of the emancipated 
slaves in the South. But the burden of his discourses was the 
confiscation of Southern property, and the utterance of ad cajytan- 
durti appeals, calculated to inflame the passions of the unthinking 
classes, until the work of subverting the Statehood of the several 
excluded Commonwealths should be completed, and the clasps of 
partisan treachery so riveted as. to be able to endure the adverse 
shocks of opposing opinion. 

The preceding charges and appeals, as detailed, afford an 
illustration of the arguments made use of by the radical speakers 
and press during the campaign of 1866, Many of the accusa- 
tions made against the President were wholly baseless ; and those 
to which a deceptions representation gave plausibility, retired 
before the light of candor and reason. The following extract 
from the Press;, a leading Republican paper of Philadelphia, dis- 
closes the character of the deceptions appeals spread before the 
country by the politicians in order to influence the unreflecting 
voters : 

" On Tuesday next, the people of four States will decide at the ballot- 
box, who are to represent them in the National Congress ; and in effect to 
pass upon the scheme of reconstruction as developed by the National 
Legislature. They are to docide whether they will accept the plan set 
forth by their represe)itatives, or whether they will submit to that of 
Andrew Johnson ; whether, in sliort, the loyal men shall govern the 
country, or whether the control of the Government shall be thrown into 
the hands of the traitors."* 

In the next issue this same partisan jjaper contained the following 

utterance : 

"The true issue of this campaign is the constitutional amendment."! 

In a subsequent number, this political organ spoke as follows : 

" The real question before the people, to-day, is whether traitors or 
loyal men shaU rule the country. "J 

• The radical accusations that were Iiurled against Democratic 
opposition to the war, were most of all difiicult to be ansM^ered. 
The party was placed by these charges, however, in a false atti- 
tude — that of hostility to the Government. Selfish leaders had 
led the Democracy so far astray, as to sanction State coercion in 
defense of the Union ; and having veered thus from the ancient 



*Philadelphia Press, October 3, 18C6. 
\Press, Oct. 5, 1866. 
XFress, Oct. 9, 1866. 



454 A REVIEW OF THE 

land-marks, its orators and press were now, after t]ie close of the 
rebellion, logically precluded from striking at the roots of the 
error, by showing who were responsible for the war ; and demon- 
strating its iniquity and deplorable consequences. Crafty poli- 
ticians, as a consequence, were the only men within the party, 
whose services were specially in requisition. Consistent Demo- 
crats were, therefore, hushed into silence as I'^gards the war ; and 
obliged to stand branded as traitors in unenlightened opinion. 
They had no choice left them, save to feign compliance with the 
new departure from principle, and support the Presidential mode 
of reconstruction, in opposition to the revolutionary Congress. 

But the prospect of breaking the ranks of the revolutionary 
j)arty, soon became doubtful after the issue had been made up 
between the two political organizations of the country. Early 
in the year, New Hampshire and Connecticut gave their usual 
party victories, Avhich they had for years been wont to do. 
When Maine, in the beginning of September, came sweeping in 
with a majority of twenty-eight thousand for radicalism, the 
defenders of the Constitution again perceived that the omens 
were against them, Tlie New York Herald^ and other politic 
journals of the North, who had so far eteadily sustained Andrew 
Johnson and his policy, in opj)Osition to the revolutionists, broke 
when the news from the old Pine State was announced. TJiey 
now advised the President to circumvent the radicals by accept- 
ing the amendment, and urging the Southern people to adopt it 
as a less evil than these were designing to inflict upon them. 
Its acceptance, they contended, would defeat the aims of the 
President's enemies, and leave the Southern people masters of 
their own State governments. But the Southern people stood 
upon higher ground than a desire simply to secure the represen- 
tation of their States. They had fought for the right of self- 
government ; and had the President been so tickle as to have 
followed the suggestions of these changeable counsellors, he 
would have found few Confederates who would have accepted 
his advice. The honor of the South was at stake ; and tliough 
she had sunk upon the battle tield, no power existed that could 
compel her to accept her own degredation. 

It was only when the results of the October elections, in 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa, were chronicled through- 
out the country, that it became clearly evident that President 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 455 

Jolmson liad lost the battle, and was now at the mercj of the 
enemy. All these States gave sweeping majorities for the radical 
ticket. In the following Kovember elections, the whole North 
was still found to be arrayed under the old banner of fanaticism ; 
and the designs of the revolutionists were now fully assured. 
Save in the State of ISTew York, the majorities that endorsed 
Congress through the Korth were almost overwhelming. Massa- 
chusetts was carried by near Y0,000, Illinois by 40,000, Michigan 
25,000, Wisconsin 20,000, and the other States by corresponding 
majorities. The only States that emancipated themselves from 
radical despotism, were Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware. By 
a system of disfranchisement, that drew its germs from Great 
Brittain's enslavement of the Irish Catholics,the revolutionists were 
enabled in this canvass to still hold, as in chains of bondage, 
the States of Missouri and West Yirginia, the majority of whose 
people cherished for their destroyers as unc[uenchable a hatred as 
ever lired the breast of man. 



4o6 A REVIEW OF THE 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

RECONSTRUCTION. OR%HE CLIMAX OF THE REVOLUTION REACHED. 

The second session of tlie Thirty-ninth Congress assembled at 
the National Capitol on December 3d, 1866. In the preliminary 
caucus of the dominant party, which preceded the opening of the 
Senate and House of Representatives, Mr. Stevens still towered 
as the controlling dictator of his party, who appeared to give 
courage and enthusiasm to the timid and flagging members of 
the political conclave. The dauntless chieftain was returned to 
the field of conflict, panoplied as an Achilles, ready to combat 
with his hated foe, the Federal Executive. On hi3 motion, a reso- 
lution was unanimously adopted in the caucus, requesting the 
Senate to reject all appointments made during the late recess, where 
the removals had been effected for political reasons. In this 
connection, he gave notice of his intention to introduce a bill to 
restrict the President as regards his right of removal from ofiice. 
A committee, headed by Mr. Stevens, was likewise appointed to 
prepare the business programme of the session ; and a resolution 
was adopted instructing this committee to consider the propriety 
of enacting a law, flxing the meeting of the next Congress before 
the time prescribed in the Constitution. 

It was thus early exemplified, that the war against the Presi- 
dent was to be prosecuted with unabating ardor. This ofiicer 
was viewed by the revolutionists as the main obstacle in the way 
of their designs, the enfranchisement of the negro, and its 
concomitant results. For this purpose, it was resolved to deprive 
him as much as possible of all the power which his official station 
placed in his hands. Ever since his breach with the radicals, the 
President had been the subject of the most bitter and acrimo- 
nious abuse, of which history affords an example. From being 
the admired Southern patriot, after his veto of the Freed men's 
Bureau bill, he sunk in radical esteem to the lowest depths of 
traitorous depravity ; and henceforth no language was too intense 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. ^57 

to desio'nate the foulness of the Presidential treason. Jefferson 
Davis, the arch-rebel of the Southern Confederacy, was never 
maligned with more vituperative denunciation, than was President 
Johnson, for daring to question the constitutionality of the 
enactments of the revolutionary Congress. 

Since the opening of the Thirty-ninth Congress, in December, 
1865, Mr. Stevens was looked upon by his partisan followers as 
the great champion of the revolution ; and^the man of all others ^ 
most fitted by age, intellect and effrontry, to lead the crusade for 
the overthrow of Confederate Statehood; and, by means of 
negro suffrage, reverse the classes to be enslaved south of the 
Potomac. A bold man, and one of reckless daring, is ever 
needed to head revolutions, and lead them to the performance of 
deeds that dazzle the unreflecting, but which invoke cries of an- 
guish from considerate observers. These latter, see in such men, 
the destroyers that devastate human effort, wreck progress, and 
overthrow the constructions, which time, talent and the skill of 
man have erected. They are the demons of eartli, the infuriates 
of pandemonium, who ride in chariots of fire, drawn by steeds 
of fanaticism ; and they are sent on missions of woo to call the 
nations to halt in their careers, and enable them to see whither 
they are wending. The leader, around whom the revolutionists 
gathered, Mr. Stevens, was one of the bold, intrepid men of the 
Pobespierrian cast, whose fame ever rests more upon their eccen- 
tricity than their philosophical intellectuality. Possessing more 
than ordinary ability, they astonish their inferiors, rather than 
overtop their equals. 

A political desperado being required to lead the revolutionists 
to their desired goal, the managers stood aside and allowed Mr. 
Stevens to assume that lead, for which he had an inordinate 
ambition. As none had the same brazen audacity as himself, he 
was accorded a leadership which on no other occasion could he 
have commanded. His leadership, however, was simply that of 
the revolutionist, rather than of the 'dispassionate Statesman, 
who has the ability to control men by the strength of his logical 
reasoning. As a district politician, Mr. Stevens was able to exert 
the control of a despot, which his mentality had framed him ; 
but his power disappeared as he ventured into deeper fords. In 
the Eeform, and in the political conventions of his State, he 
invariably sunk through lack of ability to cope as a strategist and 



458 A REVIEW OF THE 

Statesman with his political compeers and equals. In liis last 
struggle for the United States Senate, at a time when he seemed 
to be the recognized leader of his party, in the Lower House of 
Congress, he fell ingloriously in the conflict, with a man whom 
history can only regard as a dextrous and unprincipled politician. 

Following the precedent inaugurated, at the opening of the 
first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, the revolutionists, 
without waiting the Message of the President, as courtesy to the 
Chief Magistrate dictated, at the bidding of the American Rob- 
espierre, entered upon the performance of the programme which 
rancor and fanaticism had suggested. The Prince of destruction 
had, at length, enticed the Abolition Congress to the summit of 
their zeal's pagoda ; and temptingly had shown them the decep- 
tive glory that should crown their memories upon the completion 
of the work of political death, which he dictated. The. pros- 
pect was enchanting; and, obeying the seductive deceiver, they 
advanced to the performance of the task assigned thera. 

The bestowal of the elective franchise upon the African race, 
would now crown, in abolition estimation, the four years' strug- 
gle of blood with appropriate satisfaction. In no place could 
the movement to this end, be inaugurated with more fitting pro- 
priety than in the District of Columbia, where Puritan instruc- 
tion had for some time been busily elevating, as believed, the 
sable descendants of Africa to fancied equality with their former 
Caucasian masters. Accordingly, on the motion of Mr. Morrill, 
of Maine, the bill to grant suffrage to the freed negroes of the 
Federal District, was taken up in the Senate. Senators who had 
deemed it impolitic to concur in this project with the House at 
the former session, because an election was nearing itself, now 
laid aside their timidity and advocated the bill with the warmest 
enthusiasm. Eepublican Senators no longer made concealment 
that they viewed the battle for universal suffrage as already won; 
and that their party would not stop in its course, until the record 
of this victory was rgistered in the legislation of the nation. 
After a short discussion, the measure passed the Senate by a 
strict party vote. It was also taken up in the House, and 
obtained the like endorsement in that body. 

The bill having passed both Houses, was remitted to the 
President for his signature ; but this officer declined to approve 
the same ; and returned it to the House in which it originated. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 461 

reason, and served to prove, as tlie Democrats from the first had 
contended, that the bulk of radical legislation was revolutionary 
and unconstitutional. 

But notwithstanding Presidential and judicial reaction, th© 
revolution had as yet such momentum, that its progress was 
irresistible. Negro suffrage for the Southern States, that fondly 
anticipated object was too dear in radical estimation to be aban- 
doned at the dictation of the defenders of the Constitution. 
The first grand move for its attainment had been a fortunate 
one. The principle had been forced upon the Federal District ; 
and a basis of operations now existed to make inroads into other 
quarters. The organization of the Territories of ISTebraska and 
Colorado were taken up in this session of Congress, and their 
admittance into the Union conditioned upon their acceptance of 
universal suffrage. The imposition of this condition would be 
the forcible overthrow of the principle which had heretofore 
universally obtained, as regards the elective franchise. The 
determination of the question of suffrage had, up to this time, 
been universally deemed the province of the people of the 
States ; but this republican principle was now about to yield ta 
the current of the revolution that was flooding American soil. 

The overthrow of this fundamental dogma, was strongly re- 
sented by the Democrats and the Republican Conservatives in 
both Houses of Congress ; and the conscience of as violent s 
radical as Senator Wade, of Ohio, revolted at the attempt to 
reverse this cardinal principle of the Republic ; and which had 
formed one of its corner-stones since the foundation of the 
Government. The Ohio Senator, in his speech on the Nebraska 
bill, used the following language : 

"I do not know what right you have to say, that a State shall be ad- 
mitted, not on an equality with every other State, and shall not be 
allovired to regulate her elective franchise as she pleases, I say to the 
gentleman who offers this amendment, that he has not under the Consti- 
tution, as yet declared anywhere, that the Greneral Government can fix 
the status of the elective franchise. You have left it thus far with the 
States. The Constitutional Amendment that we passed last year left it 
to the States — even to the rebel States, to regulate it for themselves, the 
only restriction being, that they should not have political power lor 
those of their population whom they excluded from the right of voting. 
Of course, I am as much for the principle of the amendment as anybody 
else. I wish the word white were excluded from the Constitution of my 
own State. But neither you, sir, nor I, nor this Congress can do it^ 



458 A REVIEW OF THE 

Statesman witli his f)olitical compeers and equals. In liis last 
struggle for the United States Senate, at a time when he seemed 
to be the recognized leader of his party, in the Lower House of 
Congress, he fell ingloriously in the conflict, with a man whom 
history can only regard as a dextrous and unprincipled politician. 

Following the precedent inaugurated, at the opening of the 
first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, the revolutionists, 
without waiting the Message of the President, as courtesy to the 
Chief Magistrate dictated, at the bidding of the American Rob- 
espierre, entered upon the performance of the programme which 
rancor and fanaticism had suggested. The Prince of destruction 
had, at length, enticed the Abolition Congress to the summit of 
their zeal's pagoda ; and temptingly had shown them the decep- 
tive glory that should crown their memories upon the completion 
of the work of political death, which he dictated. The. pros- 
pect was enchanting ; and, obeying the seductive deceiver, they 
advanced to the performance of the task assigned them. 

The bestowal of the elective franchise upon the African race, 
would now crown, in abolition estimation, the four years' strug- 
gle of blood with appropriate satisfaction. In no place could 
the movement to this end, be inaugurated with more fitting pro- 
priety than in the District of Columbia, where Puritan instruc- 
tion had for some time been busily elevating, as believed, the 
sable descendants of Africa to fancied equality with their former 
Caucasian masters. Accordingly, on the motion of Mr. Morrill, 
of Maine, the bill to grant suffrage to the freed negroes of the 
Federal District, was taken up in the Senate. Senators who had 
deemed it impolitic to concur in this project with the House at 
the former session, because an election was nearing itself, now 
laid aside their timidity and advocated the bill with the warmest 
enthusiasm. Pepublican Senators no longer made concealment 
that they viewed the battle for universal suffrage as already won; 
and that their party would not stop in its course, until the record 
of this victory was rgistered in the legislation of the nation. 
After a short discussion, the measure passed the Senate by a 
strict party vote. It was also taken up in the House, and 
obtained the like endorsement in that body. 

The bill having passed both Houses, was remitted to the 
President for his signature ; but this officer declined to approve 
the same ; and returned it to the House in which it originated. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 461 

reason, and served to prove, as the Democrats from the first had 
contended, that the bulk of radical legislation was revolutionary 
and unconstitutional. 

But notwithstanding Presidential and judicial reaction, the 
revolution had as yet such momentum, that its progress was 
irresistible. Negro suffrage for the Southern States, that fondly 
anticipated object was too dear in radical estimation to be aban- 
doned at the dictation of the defenders of the Constitution. 
The first grand move for its attainment had been a fortunate 
one. The principle had been forced upon the Federal District ; 
and a basis of oj)erations now existed to make inroads into other 
quarters. The organization of the Territories of Nebraska and 
Colorado were taken up in this session of Congress, and their 
admittance into the Union conditioned upon their acceptance of 
universal suffrage. The imposition of this condition would be 
the forcible overthrow of the principle which had heretofore 
universally obtained, as regards the elective franchise. The 
determination of the question of suffrage had, up to this time^ 
been universally deemed the province of the people of the 
States ; but this republican principle was now about to yield to 
the current of the revolution that was flooding American soiL 

The overthrow of this fundamental dogma, was strongly re- 
sented by the Democrats and the Republican Conservatives in 
both Houses of Congress ; and the conscience of as violent a 
radical as Senator Wade, of Ohio, revolted at the attempt to 
reverse this cardinal principle of the Republic ; and which had 
formed one of its corner-stones since the foundation of the 
Government. The Ohio Senator, in his speech on the Nebraska 
bill, used the following language : 

"I do not know what right you have to say, that a State shall be ad- 
mitted, not on an equality with every other State, and shall not be 
allov/ed to regulate her elective franchise as she pleases. I say to the 
gentleman who offers this amendment, that he has not under the Consti- 
tution, as yet declared anywhere, that the Greneral Government can fix 
the status of the elective franchise. You have left it thus far with the 
States. The Constitutional Amendment that we passed last year left it 
to the States — even to the rebel States, to regulate it for themselves, the 
only restriction being, that they should not have political power lor 
those of their population whom they excluded from the right of voting. 
Of course, I am as much for the principle of the amendment as anybody 
else. I wish the word white were excluded from the Constitution of my 
own State, But neither you, sir, nor I^ nor this Congress can do it^ 



4C3 A REVIEW OF THE 

tmder the Constitution of the United States. We have no power here 
to say to the State of Ohio, ' correct this error in your Constitution, or 
we will correct it for you.' Will any gentleman contend that we can 
doit?"* 

The bills • for the admittance of Colorado and Nebraska as 
States, passed the two Houses of Congress, and were sent to 
President Johnson for his approval, which he declined in both 
cases to extend. He vetoed these bills, basing his dissent largely 
upon the attempted enforcement of universal suffrage upon the 
people of these Territories, which he stigmatised as an infraction 
of the fundamental principles of republican government ; yea, 
even as a violation of the Constitution. In the case of Colorado, 
the President opposed its admittance because the people of this 
Territory had themselves, through their House of Represetatives, 
entered their protest against it. He severely reflected upon the 
action of Congress, as regards the last named Territory, stigma- 
tising it as partaking too evidently of a desire to admit new 
States, without regard to principle, for the political advantages 
that might thereby enure to the revolutionists. These vetoes 
were both reconsidered in the two Houses of Congress, but the 
President having disclosed the flimsy claims of Colorado for 
admittance into the Union, his views were sustained. ^Nebraska, 
however, -was admitted as a State over the Presidential veto. 

But the great work of reconstruction yet demanded the atten- 
tion of the revolutionary Congress. The man to lead in what 
necessitated an utter repudiation of the Constitution, was the 
one who had heretofore in his utterances, been the most regard- 
less of that instrument ; and M'ho had openly declared that the 
legislation of Congress regarding the Southern States, found 
its support outside of paper compacts. This man was Mr. Ste- 
vens, who, since the Thirty-ninth Congress, stood before the 
country as the leading radical in the Lower House ; and who must 
ever figure as the Corypheus of revolutionary reconstruction, and 
the counterpart of Robespierre upon the American continent. 
As a skilled general, he began the last onset by a feigned move- 
ment in the submission of his North Carolina Bill, on the 13tli 
of December, 1866 ; and which was simply designed to gain time, 
and allow public sentiment to develop itself in the direction he 
desired. Congress, in view of the popular apprehension, was pre- 



* Annual Cydopcedia. for 1805, pp. 14S-9. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 463 

eluded, as yet, from adopting any radical sclierae of reconstruction ; 
inasmuch as but four States of the South, Texas, Alabama, Florida 
and Georgia had up to this time passed upon the Constitutional 
Amendment. An observer at Washington was able to speak of 
the JSTorth Carolina Bill in the following words : 

"The bill reported by IMr. Stevens, on Thursday last, is the beginning 
of the inevitable end"* 

Different members of Congress, since the opening of this 
session, deeming the amendment too moderate, had introduced 
bills looking to reconstruction upon the radical basis ; but all 
these were so variant that it was difficult to see how unitr could 
be evolved from their conflicting views. Governor Holden and 
other North Carolinians, had conferred with Mr. Stevens, and 
aided him in the preparation of the bill he submitted for the 
legal rehabilitation of their State. But, although the bill 
assumed the entire overthrow of the constitutional 'government 
of the State, and proposed to confer a qualified suffrage upon all 
classes, without distinction of color, who could read and write, it 
was far from meeting the views of its proposer. The introduction 
of this bill created no enthusiasm in the breasts of those who 
cherished designs more revolutionary than it proposed. As a 
consequence, the bantling came dead-born into earth's sphere ; 
and perished unwept, receiving neither the sorrow of its mater- 
nal progenitor, nor of the consanguineous fraternity. 

But the real movement of Mr. Stevens, the arch revolutionist 
in Congress, to effect the reconstruction of the Southern States 
in accordance with his views, began fairly on the 3d of January, 
1867. Disliking the bill which had been submitted by the Re- 
construction Committee, he called up his own substitute which 
he sustained in one of his ablest speeches. This bill of Mr. Stevens 
admitted the temporary validity of the Government of the ten 
excluded States, and conferred upon all male citizens the right of 
suffrage ; but excluded from citizenship, all those who being of 
full age, on the 4th of March, 1861, had held office under the 
Confederate States, or who had sworn allegiance to the said Gov- 
ernment. It contained a plan of reconstructing the South, that 
did not meet the approbation of quite a number of the influential 
Abolitionists ; but it served suitably as a subject of discussion 
before Congress and the nation. This bill of Mr. Stevens em- 



♦Philadelphia Press, December 18th, 1866. 



464 A REVIEW OF THE 

bodied, as liad also liis Kortli Carolina proposition, liis leading 
conception, that the Confederate Commonwealths had lost their 
Statehood; and to regain vitality, required an emenation of 
power from the pleroma of the Rump Congress. This feature 
of his bill had the approbation of the revolutionists ; and the dis- 
cussion on their part, from this period, was mainly confined to 
the terms and franchise preliminaries to be adopted. 

The Stevens Bill having been modified considerably by amend- 
ments nnd otherwise, again came up in the House on January 
16th, 1867, when it was made the subject of a spirited discussion. 
Representative Paine, of Wisconsin, opened the debate in a very 
bitter attack upon Mr. Stevens for proposing to recognize as valid 
the existing State governments of the South. Mr. Bingham, of 
Ohio, also combatted the Stevens bill and the other radical 
modes of reconstruction that had been proposed ; and declared 
that honor demanded of Congress, that it adhere to its proposi- 
tion made to the South in its Constitutional Amendment. He 
moved the recommittment of the Stevens bill to the Committee 
on Reconstruction, in order that a better matured measure might 
be presented for the consideration of Congress. The bill, after 
having been modified, was referred to the Committee on Recon- 
struction. 

On the 6th of February, Mr. Stevens, from this committee, 
reported a new " bill to provide for the more efficient govern- 
ment of the insurrectionary States." The revolutionists, by this 
time, were coming more into accord in their views ; and time 
alone was needed to evolve the issue. The House entered, with- 
out delay, upon a debate on this bill, which lasted for several 
days. The last measure of Mr. Stevens, entitled the Military Bill, 
was intended to set aside the governments of the Southern States 
and divide them into five districts, over each of which the General 
of the army should be authorized to appoint a subordinate, whose 
martial rule, in his special division, should be supreme. The bill 
proposed the complete subordination of the civil to military law ; 
left the Southern States without representation ; and was designed 
simply as a preparative for ulterior measures. It had been framed 
with the view of preparing the way for the Louisiana bill,* which 

* The Louisiana Bill embodied the conclusions arrived at by the par- 
tisan committee appointed by the House of Representatives, to investi- 
gate the New Orleans riots of July 30th, 1866. Its clear object was to 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 465 

enfranchised the negroes, but which virtually disfranchised the 
whites of the South. All this being secured, the coveted aim of the 
revolutionists would have been reached. But this was too extreme, 
for all except the Stevens radicals. ^ On the 12th of February, 
James G. Blaine, of Maine, moved that the Military Bill be re- 
ferred to the Committee on the Judiciary, with instructions to 
report back a provision admitting the Southern States, ujDon the 
adoption of the Constitutional Amendment, with suti'rage for all, 
black and white. This amendment was to the effect that any 
rebel State adopting the Constitutional amendment, giving the 
elective franchise to its citizens without respect to color, and 
adopting a Constitution ratified by all its legal voters, should be 
declared entitled to representation in Congress ; and that from 
the day of its admission, the military sections of the bill 
should be inoperative in such State. It did not strike out a sin- 
gle section of the Stevens Bill, but simply introduced a new 
issue of reconstruction. The Blaine Amendment was defeated 
in the House, upon the grounds that it did not disfranchise 
any of the rebel leaders, but accorded them the full priv- 
ilege of participating in the work of reconstruction. The 
intense revolutionists supported the Stevens Bill, almost pure 
and entire ; only the moderate Republicans favoring the amend- 
ment offered by Mr. Blaine. As a consequence, the amendment 
was defeated. The Military Bill of Mr. Stevens, then with 
slight alterations, on the 13th of February, obtained the sanction 
of the House, by a vote of 109 yeas to 55 nays. 

The Military Bill, after this, came to the Senate and was de- 
bated in this body on February 16th, meeting with resolute 
opposition, chiefly on the ground that it proposed no solution of 
the question which for two years had been before Congress ; and 
that it established in the South simply the rule of the sword, 
without containing any prmnsions for the restoration of civil 
governments. The tirst change proposed by the Senate, was the 
amendment which had been offered in the House by Mr. Blaine, 
iDut by that body rejected. This was also defeated in the Senate, 



disfranchise as many of the Southern whites as pretexts could be urged 
for so doing. About nine teen-twentieths were proposed to be disfran- 
chised by this measure. Tlie bill was the production of Mr. Eliot, of 
Massachusetts, on whose motion tiie committee had been raised for the 
investigation of the said riot. It was introduced into the House on the 
11th of February, and passed that body on the following day. 



4Ga A REVIEW OF THE 

but ratlier, as it were, for parliamentary purposes. Senator 
Sherman submitted a substitute for the military bill of Stevens, 
which declared that no legal governments exist in the Confede- 
rate States, divided them injo military districts, and prohibited 
State authority from interfering with military orders. The sub- 
stitute differed from the Stevens Bill, in making it the duty of 
the President to appoint the military commanders, and in par- 
tially making the Blaine An;iendment the basis of reconstruction. 
Military authority, by the Sherman substitute, was made supreme 
in the ten unrepresented States, and suffrage conferred upon all 
classes, without distinction of race or color. 

The democratic resistance to the revolutionary movement, 
which aimed at negro suffrage in the Southern States, like as 
against a tide of destiny, was utterly powerless. Able and 
argumentative speeches were made by Senators Davis, Saulsbury, 
Hendi'icks, McDougal and others, showing the unconstitutionality 
of such legislation ; but all logic and argumentation were vain, 
as the measure with but slight alteration^ passed as submitted by 
the Ohio Senator, and by the strong vote of twenty-nine yeas to 
ten nays. " Occasional," in the Philadelphia Press of February 
17th, 1867, upon the passage of the Sherman Bill, wrote as 
follows : 

" This Sabbatli morning found the Republicans of the United: States 
Senate, after a session of eighteen hours, (except a rest from 4)^ o'clock 
till 7 last evening) agreed in favor of the substitute of Sherman, of Ohio, 
for the various propositions that have been proposed and rejected." 

The Sherman Bill, when it came to the House encountered a 
fierce opposition from Stevens, Boutwell, Stokes and other 
radicals, on the grounds that it providqd too general an amnesty 
for the rebels, and that it would jDcrmit the State Governments 
in the South, after reconstruction, to fall into their hands. The 
object of these men was to secure the disfranchisement of as 
large a number of the Southern whites as possible, in order that 
their revolutionary party might be able to grasp and hold the 
sceptre in the South by means of negro suffrage. Hence, they 
greatly favored Mr. Eliot's bill for the government of Louisiana, 
which disfranchised the rebels, as it were, by wholesale. Mr. Ste- 
vens and his friends, as a consequence, united with the Democrats in 
opposition to concurring in the passage of the Sherman Bill as 
it came from the Senate, and carried a Committee of Conference, 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 467 

The Senate refused a conference, and insisted on its amendments. 
The House now adopted two important amendments, the ono 
offered by Mr. Shellaberger, and the other by Mr. Wilson. The 
iirst was to the effect, that until the rebel States were admitted 
to representation, the civil governments of the Soutli should be 
purely provisional ; and the latter declared, that no person ex- 
cluded from office by the Constitutional Amendments, shall be 
permitted to take part in the re-organization of the rebel 
States. The Sherman Bill, with these amendments havino- 
passed the House, was sent to the Senate for its concurrence. 
This latter body accepted these amendments prepared by the 
House, and the bill was passed by thirty-five yeas to seven nays. 
Even Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, as an acquiescent vicar of 
Bray, at the last hour deserted his colors for those of the enemy, 
and swelled the Senatorial roll of those trampling on the Consti- 
tution of their country. 

The bill encountered the usual veto of the President, but was 
repassed by both Houses, and became a j^art of the unconstitu- 
tional, revolutionary legislation. As another Argonautic cruise, 
the great expedition of abolitionism was now ended ; and the 
golden fleece of their hopes was grasped. This last act was also 
viewed as the philosopher's stone, which would transform as by 
magic, the emancipated slaves into American citizens, capable of 
preserving republican institutions. This, however, was simply 
the ostensible view entertained by the zealous, hair-brained fa- 
natics, who had deluded themselves into the belief that education 
could metamorphose barbarian negroes into intelligent, virtuous 
citizens. The deep, crafty schemers of the Stevens type, enter- 
tained no such silly conceptions, but they bent with the popular 
communistic current of the age, and sought by means of fraud 
an9. hypocrisy to govern the unthinking by a more despotic 
tyranny than they assumed to have broken. During the discus- 
sion of the reconstruction measures, Mr. Stevens made no con- 
cealment that he favored the enfranchisement of the negroes, in 
order to strengthen his party, and politically enslave the Southern 
whites. This, in short, was the great object of the intelligent 
revolutionists. Stevens, while arguing for universal suffrage, 
said: 

" The white Union men are in a great minority in each of those States. 
With them the blacks would act in a body ; and it is believed that in 



468 A REVIEW OF THE 

each of said States, except one, the two united would form a majority, 
control the States, and protect themselves. * * * It would 
insure tlie ascendency of the Union party. For I believe, on my con- 
science, that on the continued ascendency of that party, depends the 
safety of this great nation. If impartial suffrage is excluded in the 
rebel States, then every one of them is sure to send a solid rebel repre- 
sentative delegation to Congress, and cast a solid rebel electoral vote. 
They, with their kindred copperheads of the North, would always elect 
the President and control Congress."* 

The infamous, wicked and diabolical crime, wliicli the sagacious 
revolutionists knew that they had committed against civilization 
and Southern society, fully assured them of the counter revolu- 
tion of hate and retaliation, Avhich would consign them to the 
bottomless pit of American rage and execration ; unless by the 
votes of the ignorant negroes and whites, they should be able to 
embank with success against the recurrent flood. It was 
rule or ruin with the fanatical party. For they were too well 
awiire, that, composing as they did, the great minority of the 
Amei'ican people, a day of retribution would confront them in 
all its horrible solemnity. To hide, therefore, their guilt and 
escape merited detection, they preferred the downfall of consti- 
tutional republican government, with all its attendant calamities ; 
and, as if to prevent forever its restoration, they re-opened all the 
flood-gates of ruin, which the wisdom of the world during many 
centuries had been engaged in closing. 

But the climax of the revolution was now reached. The -Re- 
public of the fathers was fully prostrated in the Stevens-Sherman 
Reconstruction Enactment of the Rump Congress ; the union of 
consent was transformed into one of antagonism, which arms 
and armies united ; and the States were left in a condition of 
effervescence, from which the hand of the l^apoleonic master 
may alone be able to rescue them. Hypocritical centralism had 
trampled over constitutionalism ; but it was the creature of per- 
lidy, fraud and dissimulation ; and lacked the bold front that 
seizes the reins by manly entrepidity and moral heroism. As 
dastards and knaves, the revolutionists had subverted and trod- 
den under foot the Magna-charta of their country, by pandering 
to the low insinuating sentiments of the time, and flinging sops 
to the multitude ; and upon the ruins of constitutional govern- 
ment were rearing a despotism more odious and corrupt than the 

* Annual C ydopcedia for 1867, p. 207. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 4G9 

basest absolutism of Asia. The Southern States were consigned 
to military rule, until the new citizens should remodel the State 
Constitutions in conformity with the mandates of the Washing- 
ton dictators. In the cataclysm that prostrated Southern society, 
constitutional government was wholly submerged ; and the land 
of the Pinkneys, Rutleges and Randolphs was now ready to be- 
come a nest of unclean birds. The political buzzards and cor- 
morants of the ISTorth had, for some time, been scenting the fields 
of putridity in which to gorge their insatiate maws. 

In the wreck of society that befell the South at the hands of 
hypocrisy and fanaticism, honor and virtue, the two main pillars 
of free government were broken down, and chicanery and du- 
plicity substituted. In the Korth, society had for years been 
bending to the blasts of fraud and dissimulation ; and it was 
only preserved from overthrow by the high Southern tone* 
which diffused its influence from the Federal centre throughout 
the Union. This being mainly cut off in secession, the torrent 
of corruption began at once audibly to roar ; and when the re- 
constructionists had ended their work, it M^as rushing with 
rapidity as a swelling stream. It was giving evident tokens that 
after uniting with the Southern flood, already rising from recon- 
struction, it would become the great river upon which all the 
communistic later-day craft should carry the soldiery to the last 
battle of Democracy, the Armegeddon of the new world. 

The preliminary legislative "svork of reconstruction having been 
mainly eompletedf for the subversion of the State Governments 
in the South ; the next question of pressing concern with the 
revolutionists, was how best to entrammel President Johnson, 
and circumscribe his oflicial power by every means within their 
reach. Ever since his breach with them, they busied themselves 
in devising plans to overcome his opposition, and undermine his 
influence ^\ith the people. During this session of Congress, in 
accordance with his resolution in the preliminary caucus, Mr. 
Stevens, the great enemy of the President, introduced into the 
House a bill to regulate removals from ofiice. A bill with simi- 
lar purpose, introduced at the previous session, was also consid- 

* Southern society, owing to its class subordination, naturally produced 
a higher tone of sentiment than tlie North has ever been able to exhibit. 

f Two supplementary Reconstruction Bills were subsequently passed, 
which were designed for carrying into effect the provisions of the 
Stevens-Sherman Bill. 



470 A REVIEW OF THE 

ered, and after having gone through the process of emendation, 
passed the House. Being taken up in the Senate, the concurrence 
of this body was likewise secured. It afterwards came to the 
President for his approval or dissent. The bill, as it passed both 
Houses, precluded the President from removing, of his own 
authority, officials ; and requiring the assent of the Senate to 
render his removals valid, in like manner, as to confirm their 
appointments. 

This was another unprecedented stretch of legislation, and of 
itself evinced the revolutionary character of the men who domi- 
nated, regardless of reason and law, in the Congress of the 
nation. The President vetoed the bill to deprive him of the 
authority legally vested in him as the Federal Executive ; and the 
legitimacy of which had never been validly questioned since 1789, 
in the sitting of the first Congress, after the formation of the 
Constiuution. But this onslaught upon Presidential authority, 
was the effort of pure partisans, who were bent upon wresting 
all power from their own Chief Magistrate, because they dis- 
covered that he entertained greater regard for his oath of office, 
than for the promotion of their revolutionary designs. Presi- 
dent Johnson strongly disputed the right of Congress to abridge 
his power to dismiss, at his own option, any subordinate official 
for the performacne of whose duty he, as the head of the Gov- 
ernment, was responsible. All his predecessors had exercised 
the power of dismissing authoritatively, and without question, any 
of their official subordinates ; and it was one which the framers 
of the Government deemed the indispensable right of the officer 
who filled the Presidential Chair. The bill was, however, re- 
considered ; and having passed both Houses over the veto, was 
enrolled amongst the national statutes. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 471 



CHAPTER XXX. 



THE AFRICANIZATION OF THE SOUTH. 



The soul of the fanatics being fixed upon the total revolution 
of Southern Society, before the adjournment of the Thirty- 
ninth Congress, it was determined to convene at once the new 
one, in order to have the supervisory eye of radicalism over the 
Presidential occijpant. and the working of the favorite leo-isla- 
tion. Accordingly, the Fortieth Congress assembled on the 4tli 
of March, immediately following the dissolution of the former 
representative bodies. It was soon apparent to the keen percep- 
tion of the managers, that additional features must be impressed 
upon the Sherman-Stevens Reconstruction Act of March 2d 
1867, in order to secure the coveted objects of the friends of 
that measure. A supplementary bill was therefore prepared, 
and passed both Houses of Congress, directing the registration 
of the voters in the Southern States, and the other auxiliary 
particulars hitherto overlooked by the legislators. This supple- 
ment to the Reconstruction Act, also met the opposition of a 
Presidential veto, but on the 23d of March it became a law in 
the usual method as had its congenital associates. 

President Johnson, although disapproving the revolutionary 
legislation, which was to subvert the State Governments of the 
South, and overturn the whole social system of that section 
acquiesced, nevertheless, as the Executive representative of the 
nation, and took such action as the anti-constitutional enactments 
demanded. The ten States subjected to military despotism were 
divided into five districts,* over each of which the President 

*The State of Virginia formed the first of these districts; North and 
South Carolina the second; Alabama, Florida and Georgia the third; 
A rkansas and Mississippi the fourth ; and Louisiana and Texas the fifth. 
Con iiderable exchanging of the military commanders of these districts 
iojU; place. General Hancock was tubitituted for General Sheridan, 



473 A REVIEW OF THE 

appointed a General of the armj, as the law required of him. 
For i\\& fi7'st of these districts, J. M. Schofield was selected; 
over the second, Daniel E. Sickles ; in the third, General Pope ; 
to the fourth, General Ord ; and General Sheridan was assigned 
to the command of the jifth district. 

The principles of republicanism were found altogether inade- 
quate for the work which the revolutionists were determined to 
efEect ; and those of oriental empires were substituted by men 
striving for ideal equality, and the enlarged liberalism of social- 
istic Europe. But it was inconsistent, and wholly unphilanthropic, 
to iind men, who professed to be the friends of repubHcan liberty, 
entirely ignoring, as it were, the results of freedom ; and even 
supplanting these by means of viler tyranny and more despotic 
usurpation than the people of America ever witnessed. Civil 
law all through the South was compelled to descend from its 
ancient seat, at the nod of military satraps, who were clothed 
with an authority, which no constitutional power in America was 
able to confer. The rule of the sword which modern civilization 
had laid aside, was substituted by legislators in order to force 
upon an unwilling people, measures against which, reason and the 
sensibilities of the Caucasian race, revolted. 

A system of intolerance was inaugurated in the Southern 
States, under the pretence of law, which found no warrant, save 
in the enthusiastic zeal of despots, who, Gessler-like, could im- 
prison their countrymen for diifering with them in political opin- 
ions ; and giving evidence of that diiferenee by some unguarded 
remarks or incautious exhibitions of the feelings of freemen. It 
was but natural that the Southern people should resent treat- 
ment, designed to crush their free and independent spirit; render 
them down-trodden serfs of barbarian negroes; and enchain them 
to the car of revolutionary oppression, from which it should for 
years be impossible to rescue them. Governors of States, Judges 
of the courts, and other officials in the South, were removed 



•with great profit to the oppressed Southern people ; General E. R. S. 
Canby for General Daniel E. Sickles, witli some advantage ; General 
McDowell for General Ord, with no loss, and General Meade took the 
place of General Pope, no special gain, however, being realized. Gen- 
eral Schofield was honorably relieved by being invited to assume the 
higher post of Secretary of War. General Stoneman was then assigned 
to the command of the first district. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 473 

from their places by militaiy dictators,* who were base enough 
as to sink their manhood in subserviency to arbitrary power ; and 
in the execution of authority with which, as they were well 
aware, the Constitution of their country had never clothed them. 
Suppliant tools of despotism, whom the people of the South de- 
spised, were foisted into place and position by Generals Sheridan, 
Sickles and other appointees of the Federal Government. 

A fermentation f of sentiment began in the South, with the 
appointment of the Federal satraps, and the inauguration of 
measures for the reconstruction of the Southern States. Meet- 
ino^s of the native whites assembled together for consultation all 
over the South. Assemblages of the negroes and of the unchi- 
valric whites, inspired by tlie latter, soon commenced also to be 
held in different States, and resolutions were adopted at these, 
which were fully in accord with the views of the most extreme 
anti-slavery men of the IN^orth. No other result could be 
expected, than that the newly enfranchised race would sympathise 
with and attach itself, in a body to that party, to which it owed 
its freedom and the right of suffrage. The boon of liberty and 
American citizenship appeared to the untutored African, as of 

*oren. S eiidan removed Governors Throckmorton, of Texas, and Wells, 
of Louisiana. Gov. Jenkins, of Georgia, was removed by Gen. Meade ; 
and Gov. Humphreys, of Mississippi, was removed by Gen. McDowell. 
The removal of other officers woidd near fill a volume. 

f Movements were inaugurated, in April, 1867, in Georgia and Mississ- 
ippi, to test before the Supreme Court of the United States the constitu- 
tionality of the reconstruction legislation, which would, unless checked, 
subvert the State Governments in the Sjuth. The Supreme Judicial 
Tribunal, was now become the last hope of the Southern people, to resist 
the flood of revolution, which was about to cover them with tlie putrid 
filth of negi'o supremacy. Applications were made on behalf of these 
States to file bills for injunctions to restrain the Pi'esident, as the repre- 
sentative of the Government, from exeoutmg laws odious to him- 
self and to the white people of the South. But the Supreme Court, 
before this period, had become a target of abuse for the revolutionary 
faction that held the reins of power ; and its present existence depended 
upon the will of Congress. It was, therefore, impotent to resist the 
legislation, even though unanimously oi^posed to it. But besides, a 
minority of its members belonged to the political party, which favored 
the legislation offensive to the South. Tne Court, therefore, determined 
that it had no power to consider the reconstruction laws, and thence dis- 
missed, lor want of jurisdiction, the applications for the bills of injunc- 
tion. It would seem not difficult to account for such a decision, or to 
estimate its value, when made by a Court that could decide the Legal 
Tender Bill unconstitutional ; and in less than two years afterwards re- 
verse that same decision, which it had so solemnly pronounced. The 
} eriod, however, had arrived in the history of the country, when the 
fanatics were able to do what Daniel Webster predictei, that they would 
do after their advent to power : they were able to set the Siipreuie Court 
at defiance. 



474 A REVIEW OF THE 

infinite consequence ; and his devotion to liis new masters became 
at once as servile and adulatory, as it had been in his former condi- 
tion of slavery. He served therefore, admirably as the instru- 
ment in the hands of the dextrous politician to grasp what 
otherwise would have been impossible to obtain. Political man- 
ipulation in the South became a sort of mutual admiration school 
for corrupt office-seekers and ignorant negroes. The one could 
flatter the emancipated blacks upon the results of the war, and 
their great efficiency and aid in contributing to the same ; whilst 
the other, in turn, could obsequiously acquiesce in the dictates of 
the new rulers, and help them to such posts of distinction as 
they especially coveted. 

But the condition in which the Southern whites of the old 
ruling class now found themselves, was deplorable in the extreme. 
Bred in sentiments of honor and high-toned chivalry, they were 
unable to brook the reflection of universal suffrage in their 
midst ; and that their former slaves, who were just released from 
servitude, should be recognized as equals with themselves upon 
the political arena. Investigation and observation had satisfied 
many persons, not only in the South but also in the North, that 
r3]3ublican government ran a hazardous risk of loosing its equipoise 
even with unlimited Caucasian suffrage. But, to throw all the 
negroes into the political scale, without the least preparation for 
citizenship, was risking an extreme which conservatism would 
never have ventured. The plunge, however, having been made, 
large numbers of the people ol the South were in the utmost 
quandary to know how to act in the altered situation of affairs. 
Many, impressed with the belief that republican government 
was fully ended, resolved to perform no part in the political 
drama, which w^as to be enacted for the restoration of civil gov- 
ernment in the South, and in accordance with the revolutionary 
programme. They felt amply sustained in their views, when 
they called to mind the numerous predictions of the early states- 
men of the Republic, who looked forward to a civil war, as the 
event which would end free government within the limits of the 
American Union. But, thougli these were the sentiments and 
opinions of a large and intelligent class of the Southern people, 
another portion of them, differing little from the former in 
many of their views, believed, nevertheless, that duty to them- ' 
selves and to their section, demanded of them, that they should 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 475 

continue to strug^^le for their rights in the midst of all their 
difficulties ; and that quiescence in the new movements inaugu- 
latel in their midst, would be fatal to all their hopes as citizens 
of a common country. This class of the Southern people reso- 
lutely placed their shoulders to the wheel, resolved to do their 
utmost to save their States from the deplorable fate, which negro 
suffrage had in store for all of those that should be submerged 
by the flood of tilth ready to be let loose upon them. 

The several military commanders, in accordance with their 
requirements, appointed Boards of Registration in their different 
districts, whose duty it should be, to cause an enrollment to be 
made of the old and new citizens, qualitied to vote under the 
reconstruction schedule. They also, in general orders, named 
the times when elections should take place in the several States 
to determine upon the calling of conventions, to revise and alter 
the Constitutions of these States, and also to choose delegates to 
the said conventions. Auxiliary Boards of Registration were 
likewise appointed throughout every State of the South to be 
reconstruc.ed ; which boards were to act in subordination to the 
principal tribunal selected in each State by the military autocrats 
of the various districts. The registration of voters, which was 
made in all the Southern States, was purely a work of political 
partisanship,* engineered in the interests of that party which 
secured the passage of the laws, under which the proceedings 
were held. The negroes were enrolled as voters by wholesale, 
but the frown of power rested upon every applicant for regis- 
tration, whose countenance indicated that suspicious descent, that 
was likely to revolt against any intimate contact with the sud- 
denly elevated children of Ham. Every member of the sus- 
pected race, must either bear evident marks of soul-degredation, 
or prove his allegiance to the party of revolution, before he 
could have liis name uncontestedly recorded as a legal voter in 
his State. All those making application for registration, and not 
possessing the characteristics agreeable to radicalism, were sub- 
jected to an ordeal of scrutiny, that was sufficient to deter all 
save the boldest from the undertaking. 

* The Anti-Slavery standard confessed as follows : " The managers of 
the Republican paity rely entirely on the rebel States to elect Gen. Grant. 
* * , * It ii planned to admit the Southern States on the well un- 
c^erstood' condition, that they vote the Republican ticket, no matter what 
name that ticket bears." — Quoted in the NewYork iZeraZd of Jan. 9, 1868. 



473 A REVIEW OF THE 

Bat rei^istration being now tlie all important particular to 
be considered in the work of reconstruction, this matter was 
scrutinized and v/atched by the radicals with the all considerative 
care of devoted politicians. After the adjournment of the 
special session of the Fortieth Congress, in the Spring of 1867, 
danger was at once manifest, when the putting in force of the 
reconstruction laws became a question of Executive Administra- 
tion. Certain doubtful points of the law were submitted by 
President Johnson to his Attorney-General, for an opinion that 
should form a guide upon the matters in dispute. This officer, 
having thoroughly considered the questions in controversy, on 
the 12th of June gave an elaborate opinion upon the law, and 
one which aroused the fears of the revolutionists, and induced 
them ascain to buckle on their armor for a new contest with the 
Administration. If this opinion of the law officer of the Gov- 
ernment were permitted to be accepted as the true intepretation 
of the law, they perceived that they would be unable to secure 
the reconstruction of the South in the interests of their party ; 
and this desired result, in radical estimation, must be secured at 
all hazards. Altogether too small a number of Confederates 
would be excluded from the ballot-box, the official opinion being 
permitted to obtain as the interpretation of the Government. 
Clamor arose over the whole North, in oj)position to the views 
of Mr. Stausberry, and no other remedy was feasible save in the 
re-assembling of Congress, and in the passage of another supple- 
mental bill, that should nullify the newly submitted interpretation. 
On the 3d of July, 1867, therefore, both Houses of Congress 
assembled in overwhelming numbers, determined to give recon- 
struction a different turn from what the Administration, under 
the advice of the Attorney-General, was inclined to do. A 
declaratory act, as it was called, M-as passed at this special session 
of Congress, and became a law over the usual veto of the Presi- 
dent. This act was declaratory, however, only in name, as addi- 
tions, new in nature, character and effect, were clearly and palpa- 
bly made to wliat had already been enacted on the subject of 
reconstruction. The principal points made more clear in the Act 
of July 19th, were the. enunciation of the entire and complete 
suppremacy of the military power throughout the whole South- 
ern country ; the enlargement of the power of the military 
commanders ; and that the Boards of Eegistration should havo 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 477 

the fullest latitude of investigation, and the power of rejecting 
whomsoever they deemed proper. Senator Buckalew, afterwards 
speaking of this legislation and of the revolutionists, said : 

" They carried on the whole proceeding of reconstruction with refer- 
ence to party advantages." * 

Kegistration, after the passage of this Act, proceeded with 
vigor; and the negroes were enrolled by the grossly partisan 
boards, with great satisfaction, as the individuals who should 
sanction by their votes the decrees of the revolutionary bodies. 
In many parts of the South, injustice of the most rank character 
was perpetrated upon the rights of the white people, who were 
fairly entitled to be registered and permitted to vote. Numerous 
classes of persons, by no means disqualified to register; such as 
sextons of churches, and petty officers of municipalities were re- 
jected upon flimsy pretences, as disloyal and to be excluded from 
the rights of citizenship. After this part of the programme 
had been completed, it was found that the negroes upon the 
registry outnumbered the whites in nearly every one of the 
Southern States ; and that thus the triumph of radicalism w\as 
assured. In two of these States the black population considera- 
bly exceeded the white, which gave the former the political 
control in them, even though none of the latter had been dis- 
franchised for participation in the rebellion. Many of the whites 
refused to register, because they were unwilling to endure the 
ordeal, that was necessary to be encountered, before the partisan 
boards that were authorized to pass upon their qualifications as 
citizens of their States. The necessity imposed upon them, by 
the revolutionary Congress, seemed unjustly to require of them 
a degredation of their manhood, to which as freemen, educated 
in schools of honor, they were unwilling to submit. As chiv- 
alric members, therefore, of an overturned republic, they pre- 
ferred to endure the injustice of political ostracism, rather than 
to be guilty of the meanness of crouching before the tribunals 
which radicalism had set up ; and ignobly strugglino- for the 
privilege of being re-clothed with that citizenship of which bar- 
barian negroes were not deemed unworthy. Quite a number of 
the leading men were clearly disfranchised by the legislation of 
Congress ; and many who were not, perceived that their registra- 
tion could no longer save their States from the horrors of ncfn-o 
*New York World, September 28th, 1867. 



473 4 REVIEW OF THE 

dommation. Being unable, therefore, to interpose effective re- 
sistance, tliej were compelled to permit the Juggernaut of negro 
suffrage, unchecked, to take its course and prosti'ate the State 
Governments of the South in one common ruin. As doubts^ 
also, were entertained as regarded the parties who were clearly 
entitled to register, these were seized upon by political mounte- 
banks, as admirable means to deter large numbers of the white 
people from registering. It was given out from liigh quarters 
that all would be prosecuted whom the courts, should afterwards 
determine not to have been entitled to be registered as voters. 
An oath was also exacted of all candidates for registration, which 
Avas designed to exclude from the polls as large a number as 
possible. 

But the registration, such as it was, being at length completed 
by the boards having charge of the matter, the military com- 
manders, by general orders, afterwards fixed the times ,when 
elections should, take place in each State, to determine whether 
the novel yeomanry, would favor or disapprove of the calling of 
conventions to alter, according to the prearranged schedule, the 
several State Constitutions. It was likewise ordered, that dele- 
gates to the contemplated conventions should be voted for ; and 
where conventions were carried, these bodies in due time should 
be convened in. their respective States. In the elections thus 
fixed, the polls were directed to be kept open during several 
days, in order, as it was urged, to allow the new voters a fairer 
opportunity to express their desires for or against the conven- 
tions. 

After the registration of the several Southern States had been 
completed, orders were then given that careful revisions should 
be made ; and that the Registry Boards should strike from the 
lists, all whom they should determine to be unqualified to exer- 
cise the right of suffrage. This was an admirable safety-valve, 
in the control of expert politicians, by means of which to allow 
all the superfluous vapor, in the shape of white majorities, to 
pass off without endangering the carefully constructed machinery 
of radicalism, that was to carry the nation into the happy regions 
of xVfrican bliss. When this expunging process was with sagac- 
ious skill completed, the constitutional elections began to take 
place, one after another, with similar results. These elections 
were held in the different States from September, 1867, until 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 419 

February in tlie following year. In most of the States, few 
voted at these elections except the negroes, and also a small num- 
ber of whites, chiefly emigrants from the North. The negroes 
and their associate whites, voted almost without exception for the 
conventions.* A stronger conservative vote was polled in Vir- 
ginia than in any of the Southern States, In this State, out of 
one hundred and sixty-nine thousand votes cast, sixty-one thous- 
sand opposed the calling of a convention to alter the Constitu- 
tion. In most of the other States, only a comparatively small 
vote was cast against the conventions; in several of them, not 
over the one-tenth of the votes cast. The great body of the 
whites chose to absent themselves from the polls. 

The delegates elected to these conventions were composed 
chiefly of unknown men, both white and colored, Neither 
character nor intellectual worth were considered in the selection 
of the individuals who were to re-frame the prostrated fabric of 
the American Union. Men of wealth and distinguished consid- 
eration were defeated in these elections; and obscure, corrupt 
personages were chosen to fill the seats, that had been honored 
by the ablest and purest patriots to whom America had givers 
birth. As an example, Judge Alexander Rives, of Albemarle 
County, Virginia, a man of intelligence, wealth and position in 
society, was defeated as a delegate to the proposed convention of 
the State, by an ignorant negro. In Mecklenburg County, a 
negro, who was unable to read or write^ and who had repeatedly 
been tarnished in his passage through Courts of Justice, was 
elected a delegate over a respectable citizen. A violent partisan 
named Hunnicutt, the corruptly accused Underwood, an Irish- 
man by the name of Morrisey and two negroes, were the dele- 
gates elected from the City of Richmond. A class of leaders- 

* " The negroes were everywhere driven to the polls by the chiefs of 
the Union League Councils. The day before the election, radical agents 
traveled through Montgomery country, and summoned the blacks to 
come to the city and vote, telling; then:i that General Swain had ordered 
them to do sa, and would punish them if they d.d not. On the afternoon, 
before the day o-f election, thousands of negroes marched into Mont- 
gomery in regularly org mized regiments, eacli man bearing arms ; and 
at night they camped around the Qity as a besieging army. The danger 
of a disturbace was so great that the military authorities' ordered them 
to be disarmed. Ten per cent, of the negroes wha voted could not now 
tell, and indeed never knew, the name on the ballot which they deposited 
in the box ; they acted simply in obedience to the instructions of the 
Bureau agents, Avithout the faintest glimmering of an idea of what they 
were doing." — Correspondent from Alabama to N. Y. World, Nov. lii/i, 
1867. 



im A REVIEW OF THE 

were thrown to the surface over the whole South, such as had 
been only the product of the raging sea of French sans culottisin. 
The Parson Brownlows, and others of like revolutionary princi- 
ples, took the places that had been occupied by the Washingtons,, 
Jeifereons, Madisons, Clays and Calhouns of the pure days of the 
E<epublic. A considerable number of the delegates chosen to 
these conventions, were, as one correspondent declared, "black 
as Nox and Erebus." In more than one State the sable dele- 
gates were able to count a majority. 

But the great Webster himself had now been outstripped, in 
the school of modern communistic progress. His eagle vision 
had never discerned the coming millenium of negro govern- 
ment, which should render perfect the weakness of Caucasian 
rule. When anticipating the downfall of the Eepublic, he had 
been unable to see the future made happy, by the contrivances 
which Stevens, Sumner, Phillips, and their allies devised. His 
soul-solicitous inquiries, however, were answered in the constitu- 
tional elections that had taken place in the South. The men were 
already chosen who, in fanatical estimation, were to supplement 
the deficiencies of the framers of our Government, and do what, 
as the expounder of the Constitution declared in the following 
words, to be the difficult problem. "Who," said he, "shall re- 
construct the fabric of demolished Government ? Who shall 
rear ao-ain the well-proportioned columns of constitutional lib- 
erty ? Who shall frame together the skillful architecture which 
unites National Sovereignty with State Eights, individual security 
and public prosperity ? Now if these columns shall fall they 
will be reared not again. Like the Coliseum and the Parthenon, 
they will be destined to a melancholly and mournful immortality. 
Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them than were ever shed 
on the monuments of Roman and Grecian art, for they will be 
the remnants of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Pome ever 
saw, the edifice of constitutional liberty." 

From the first arrival of the military commanders in their 
several districts in the South, a period of turmoil and confusion 
was experienced, which baffles all efforts of the pen fairly to 
depict. The demoniac spirit of intolerance exhibited by Gen- 
erals Sheridan, Sickles, and other military rulers towards the 
people, over whom they were commissioned to bear sway, was 
sufficient to goad the most pacific populations to resistance; and 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 4Sl 

implant in the breasts of all of them feelings of hatred and 
deep-seated rancor. Could a nation of people calmly stand by, 
and endure the removal of their own legally elected officials, 
from the highest almost to the lowest, and see their places filled 
by hated individuals, whose only merit consisted in their devotion 
to the principles that had deluged their soil in blood, and 
beggared them in the land of their fathers ? Reflect upon the 
aggregated multitude of other injuries and abuse, heaped upon 
the Southern people by the men and their subordinates, who 
were illegally appointed to rule over them during this period of 
convulsion ; and consider, if the perpetration of such was calcu- 
lated to re-cement the bonds of fraternal union, upon which free 
government assumes to be based. Was it to be expected that 
freemen would, as curs, lick the hands of those who smote them ? 
And yet ten thousand fold more than this, would seem to have 
been expected by those, who could conceive that the legislation 
of Congress and the action of the revolutionary party, would not 
intensify the rage of the Southern whites, and array them in 
bitter hostility towards the black race throughout all the Southern 
States. 

By the time the Congo conclaves began to assemble in the 
different States of the South, a well united opposition of the 
native whites Avas organized in all these States ; and prepared to 
do everything in their power to resist the deadly unconstitutional 
march of the revolutionary party, over the fair fields of their 
once happy and prosperous section. But as the youthful Samp- 
son of the South, had been fatally shorn beneath the apple tree 
of Appomattox, he was now left to grind in the prison house of 
his misfortunes ; while at the same time, the dulcimers and cym- 
bals of fanatical joy were sounding hilarious tunes over his down- 
fall ; and none were now anywhere found ready to do homage to 
the former proud foeman of Northern abolitionism. The hated 
strains of his enemies' mirth, he was forced to hear ; but all the 
the avenues of escape from the bitter thraldom being closed, he 
was compelled to bear what otherwise would have been unendu- 
rable. 

On the 5th of November, 1867, the motley Convention of 
Alabama, the first of its species, assembled at Montgomery, the 
Capital of the State, in obedience to the call of General Pope ; and 
proceeded to the work of framing a Constitution and Civil Govern- 



433 A REVIEW OF THE 

ment, in accordance with the. requisitions of the Keconstruction 
Acts. A considerable number of the delegates to this convention 
were negroes, one-half of whom were unable to write their own 
names. All of them being, however, serviceable instruments in the 
hands of the revolutionary party, their presence was agreeable, and 
desired by men who cared more for their political success than for 
tlie perpetuity of constitutional government. Indeed, the whites 
who figured as members of this and the following mixed-race 
conventions in the Southern States, were the creatures of the 
social convulsions of the country. The convention of mongrels, 
that next met to imitate the proceedure of statesmen and skilled 
lawgivers, was that of Georgia ; and so, one after another, the 
citizens of the old Commonwealths of the South, were com- 
pelled to witness in their midst the variegated assemblages that 
were authorized by unconstitutional legislation to subvert their 
State Sovereignties, and foist upon them spurious constitutions 
that were nauseous to the conceptions of their people. It was 
infinitely more offensive to the people of the South ; and, as they 
viewed it, more unjust, that their State governments, by acts of 
Congress, should be made the victims of negro suffrage,* inas- 
much as all attempts to fasten it upon the North (save in New 
England) had signally failed. 

Whilst the hybrid conventions were engaged in changing the 
State Constitutions of the South, Congress again assembled in 

* Negro suffrage in the North was steadily resisted by the people, 
altliough the number of negroes in this section was comparatively small 
as compared Avith those in the South. Even up to the period when it 
was forced upon the South, one Northern State after another defeated 
the attempts that were made to introduce it. In the State of New Yoi-k, 
in 1860. (where qualified negro suffrage already was adopted), a vote was 
taken upun allowing negroes the right of sutfrage without a property 
qualification. The result was, yeas — 197,503; nays — 307,981. In the City 
of New York, the vote was, yeas — 1,640 ; nays — 37.471. In 1864, a like 
effort was made in the same State, which was defeated, with tlie follow- 
ing result : yeas— 85,406 ; nays — 224,306. In Illinois, in 1862, a vote was 
taken on the absolute and total exclusion of all negroes from the State 
limits, when the yeas were 171,893 ; nays — 71,306, On granting them the 
right of office and suffrage, the yeas were 85,649; nays — 211,920. And 
for the enactment of prohibitory laws against their coming into or 
voting in the State, the j-eas were 198,938 ; nays — 44,414. In 1865, the 
question of negro suttrage was submitted to the people of Connecticut, tmd 
was defeated by a majority of 6,272. In the State of Ohio, in 1867, when 
all efforts were made to overcome the prepossessions of the people, it was 
defeated by about 50,000 majority. About the same time it was defeated 
by considerable majorities in Kansas and Minnesota. And the people of 
Michigan, a State heavily Republican, in the Spring of 1868, voted down 
a Constitution for no other reason than that it conferred the elective 
franchise upon negroes. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 483 

December, 1SG7. It was at once determined to do, by one or 
other method, what Congress had now the power to perform. 
This was to " set the Supreme Court at defiance T . The case of 
McCardle, an editor of Mississippi, was coming before that tri- 
bunal, and the constitution ah ty of the Reconstruction Acts 
would be distinctly raised in its argument. McCardle had been 
arrested by General Ord, and having been brought before Judge 
Hill, of the United District Court of Mississippi, on Habeas 
Corjp'iis, was remanded into military custody. Judge Hill re. 
viewed the law, in an ekborate opinion, and declared that no 
judicial tribunal, having cognizance of the offense charged against 
McCardle, existed in the State, which was not subject to General 
Ord ; and he felt unable to pronounce the Reconstruction Acts 
unconstitutional. lie deemed the offense of the Mississippi 
editor a breach of law, of which the military authorities had 
cognizance. From this decision, the case was brought before the 
United States Supreme Court. 

Early in December, a bill was introduced into the Senate, to 
determine what should constitute a quorum of the Supreme 
Court. The Senate bill was amended and passed the House, so 
as to require two-thirds of the Judges of that Court to pronounce 
a law of Congress unconstitutional. But the assaults made upon 
the House proposition was so severe, that it was finally abandoned. 
The object of the contemplated legislation, was to prevent a 
majority of the Court from deciding in the McCardle case, that 
the reconstruction laws were unconstitutional. The great efforts 
of the revolutionists to prevent a decision of the Court upon 
these laws, evinced that they themselves feared judicial scrutiny. 
Of the eight Judges, of which the Court was then comjDosed, 
it seemed generally to have been understood, that five of them 
viewed the Reconstruction Acts as unconstitutional, and if a fair 
opportunity were afforded they might so decide. Such a deci- 
sion must be prevented. During the discussion of this matter 
before the House, Mr. Stevens, the revolutionary corypheus of 
that body, from the Reconstruction Committee, submitted as a 
substitute, a bill to declare that the jurisdiction of the Supreme 
Court should not extend to anything pertaining to the recon- 
struction legislation. This, althouo-h the direct wav of reachino- 
what Congress was aiming at, was in the estimation of radical 
politicians rather too unguarded an avowal of the object. An 



484 A REVIEW OF THE 

amendment, designed to accomplisli the same result, was there- 
fore proposed in the House, precluding appeals from the Circuit 
Court to the Supreme Court. This was adopted in the House, 
and concurred in by the Senate. It became a law over the 
Presidential veto. The Supreme Court was now unable to 
render a decision in the McCardle case, and the reconstruction 
legislation was freed from scrutiny. 

The work of forming new constitutions for the Southern States, 
was steadily prosecuted as prescribed. The great object with 
the white and sable Statesmen of the conventions, was to frame 
constitutions which would exclude from the polls as large a 
number as possible of the white people of the South,* so as to 
insure the success of the radical party by means of negro votes. 
After constitutions had been framed, elections were ordered in 
the different States for their adoption or rejection. A majority 
of the registered voters was required to vote upon the ratification 
of a constitution before the same could be pronounced as ratified. 
This majority was lacking in the election held in Alabama, but 
in those held in Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, 
Louisiana, Georgia and Florida, the constitutions were declared 
adopted by negro majorities. 

Protests from the white people of every State of the South 
were sent to Congress, declaring their repugnance to being com- 
pelled to submit to the rule of barbarian negroes. These pro- 
tests predicted the most deplorable consequences to their section 
and government, if they should be forced to acquiesce in negro 
domination. Deaf ears, however, were turned to all these re- 
monstrances. Instead of hesitating in their career, the revolu- 
tionists in June, 1868, admitted into the Union the State of 
Arkansas over the veto of the President. A few days after- 
wards North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, 
Florida and Alabama were admitted as States by an Act entitled 
the Omnibus hill. The admission of Alabama was a plain 
breach of faith, as it forced upon the unwilling people of the 

*As a sample of the oaths required by most of the new constitutions 
to be subscribed by evexy applicant for registration, that from Alabama 
is given : "I * * * do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I accept 
the civil and political equality of all men, and agree not to attempt to 
deprive any person, or persons, on account of race, color or previous 
condition, of any political or civil right, privilege or immunity, enjoyed 
by any other class of men." — Art. vii, Sec. 4 of New Constitution of 
Alabama. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 485 

State a Constitution wliicli, under the reconstruction law as it 
stood when the election was held, had been clearly defeated. 
The reconstructed States in turn, speedily discharged their obli- 
gations by adopting the Fourteenth Amendment to the Consti- 
tution. Their admission as States thereupon was complete. 
Senators and Representatives from these States were shortly 
afterwards received with open arms in both Houses of Congress. 
But three States, Virginia, Texas and Mississippi proved laggards 
in revolutionary policy. Bat time only was now required to 
finish the uncompleted task. The President now being power- 
less and the Supreme Court shackled, the Rumj) Congress was 
at length clothed with the requisite legislative omnipotence. 
The Africanization of the South was now fully assured. 



483 A REVIEW OF THE 



CHAPTEE XXXI. 



IMPEACHMENT OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 



Notwithstanding the revolutionary Congress was able to pass 
laws over the Presidential veto, and set the Supreme Court at 
defiance, it was not satisfied. Being the product of the turbulent 
elements of the country, it must obey the impulses of those by 
whom it was sustained, or others would grasp its place and 
sceptre. A strong feeling of hostility to Andrew Johnson, 
animated the revolutionists from the period when the President 
broke with his party, in the Winter of 18G6. The Chicago 
Tribune^ the leading Republican paper of the West, on the last 
day of March of that year, in a vehement and acrimonious 
article, urged the impeachment and removal from office of Presi- 
dent Johnson, because of his having vetoed the Freedman's 
Bureau and the Civil Rights Bills, and otherwise used his efforts 
to stem the radical tornado. The demand of this Western organ 
met the warm approbation of the infuriates of the party ; which 
proposal was from time to time renewed, as Presidential opposi- 
tion in one direction and another, strove to break the current that 
was still further prostrating the Constitution of the Republic. 

Party rancor and political hate, from the period of the collision 
of the President with his party, selected him as the mark of 
venom, against which the shafts of rage and malice were di- 
rected. From that time he became the central figure for the 
most malicious partisan abuse which history has ever recorded ; 
and all the epithets which vindictivencss was capable of manu- 
facturing, were hurled at him, as if to bury him beneath showers 
of deiamation. The man who allowed himself to be made the 
conspicuous Southern instrument of fanaticism, to inflame pas- 
sion against his native people ; as soon as he strove to check the 
unholy waves, became well-nigh the victim of the same flames, 
which for years he had with others been feeding. A misconcep- 
tion of the objects of radicalism, had seduced his adhesion to 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 487 

the wicked and unconstitutional war that was proelaimed against 
the Southern people ; and now at length, when those objects 
plainly displayed themselves, it was too late to successfully resist 
the current that was become terrillc ; and he, with others, must 
yield before the blasts that were sweeping over the land. In- 
stead of being the admired patriot of the South who filled the 
office of Military Governor of Tennessee, an office inimical to 
the Constitution of the nation, Andrew Johnson was maligned 
in the abusive sheets of fanatism, as the enemy of his country, 
the associate in crime with Jeiferson Davis and the arch-fiend of 
liberty. Viewing the Presidential conscience in the mirror of 
their own souls, the fanatics gave the Executive no credit for 
present sincerity in his opposition to their revolutionary designs. 
He had bowed to their false gods, when his homage was a prize 
in their estimation. But their victory was now complete ; and 
the fruits must be safely gathered. They now only wanted in 
their folds the sincere devotees, whose pupilage and training made 
them undissembling members of the faith they advocated. 
Neither had the revolution as yet spent its force. Its enemies 
must either retire before it, or be crushed beneath its wheels. 

From the first proposal that was made to impeach the Presi- 
dent, the clamor was kept up by the radical extremists, the cry 
becoming still the more intense as the strife between the Federal 
Executive and Congress developed itself. Mr. Stevens was one 
of the earliest and most bitter enemies of the President ; and 
lacking all conscientious regard for his obligations to support the 
Constitution, he aided to the utmost of his power in fanning the 
flames that were rising between the two Departments of the Gov- 
ernment. During the second session of the Thirtj'-ninth Con- 
gress, in 1867, the impeachment ball was set in motion b}^ General 
Ashley, a member of the Lower House of Congress from Ohio. 
This officious gentleman was put forward by the crafty manipu- 
lators to do the work that even partisan hate was as yet timid to 
undertake. He charged the President with "high crimes and 
misdemeanors ;" witli usurpation of power and violation of law ; 
and also, that he had made a corrupt use of the appointing, the 
pardoning, and the veto power ; and had corruptlj'^ interfered in 
elections. A committee was appointed, and after a laborious re- 
search and collection of testimon}^, three separate reports were 
submitted by different members. These reports were made hi 



488 A REVIEW OF THE 

the first regular session of the Fortieth Congress, in December, 
1867. The current of poHtical fury that was beating against the 
President had by this time swollen considerably, and in many 
places was overflowing its banks. A majority of the above named 
committee concurred in recommending the impeachment of An- 
drew Johnson ; but the House still hesitated to sanction this 
extreme proceeding, which partisan rancor alone sustained. Party 
prudence, therefore, dictated that a more plausible pretext for im- 
peachment should be awaited. The vote in the House on this 
question was, 56 yeas, all revolutionists, to 108 naj^s. The Demo- 
crats voted against this first, as all the following efforts of madness. 
In the meantime, the struggle between Congress and the 
President had grown more bitter and impracticable, and had been 
carried even into the latter's official household. Edwin M. 
Stanton, the Secretary of War, being a warm partisan of Con- 
gress, was offensive to the President as a member of his select 
Council. He continued, however, to retain his office, despite the 
repeatedly expressed wish of the Executive that he would retire. 
At length the President expressed his desire in writing. On 
the 5th of August, 1867, he addressed Mr. Stanton as follows: 

"Sir : — Public considerations of a high character, constrain me to say 
that your resignation, as Secretary of "War, will be accepted." 

To this message of laconic brevity, Mr. Stanton, in his reply, 
was equally brief : 

" Sir : — « » « In reply, I have the honor to say, that public 
considerations of a high character, which alone have induced me to con- 
tinue at the head of this Department, constrain me not to resign the 
oflace of Secretary of War, before the next meeting of Congress." 

On the 12th of the same month, the President suspended Mr. 
Stanton from his office, and empowered General Grant, tempo- 
rarily to act as Secretary of War. 

At the time the President suspended Mr. Stanton, the Senate 
of the United States was not in session. Upon the assembling 
of the Senate in December, 1867, the President, as required by 
the Tenure of Office Act, communicated to this body his reasons 
for the suspension of the Secretary of War. The Senate hav- 
ing considered the President's reasons, declared them on January 
13th, 1868, as inadequate to justify the removal of Mr. Stanton, 
in the following words : 

'^Resolved, That having considered the evidence and reasons given by 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 48D 

the President, in his report of December 12th, 1867, for the suspension, 
from the office of Secretary of War of Edwin M. Stanton, the Senate do 
not concur in such suspension," 

As soon as this decision of the Senate was communicated to 
General Grant,* the latter vacated the office of Secretary of War, 
and Mr. Stanton took possession of the same without delay. 

General Grant to this question, replied : 

*' I shall, in that event, either hand you my resignation as acting Secre- 
tary of War, or let a mandamus be issued against me to surrender the 
office. 

On Saturday, January 11th, 1868, two days before the non- 
concurring action of the Senate took place, the President again 
called General Grant's attention to the matter, when the latter 
reiterated his previous promise, and added that the President 
should hear from him on Monday. He saw the President, as 
promised, but gave no intimation of any change in his views. 
Afterwards, when Mr. Stanton had again taken possession of the 
"War Office, General Grant called upon the President, and was 
present at a Cabinet meeting, and being reminded by, the Presi- 
dent of his promise, admitted his having made such in the 
presence of the members of the Cabinet. The President after 
this, in a letter, accused General Grant of a violation of his 
promise, and was sustained in his assertion by five members of 
his Cabinet. General Grant, in turn, over his signature, denied 
the charges made by the President, but stood alone in his allega- 
tions, and wholly unsupported. 

Owing tc the speedy surrender of the "War Office, by the ad 
interim Secretary to Edwin M. Stanton, the President was frus- 
trated in his design of making a test case for the courts to 
determine the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act ; and 
whether or not Congress had deprived him of the power of 
changing his Secretary of "War. Had General Grant intimated 
his intention of surrendering the office, the President would 
have named a Secretary in his stead, who would have declined 
to surrender to Mr. Stanton, until the courts would have de- 
termined to whom the office belonged. In the contest between 
the President and Congress, it was quite natural for every man 

*President Johnson, being apprehensive of the action which the Senate 
would take, asked General Grant, his Secretary of War ad interim, what 
his course would be, in case the Senate should not concur in his reasons 
for the removal of Mr. Stanton. 



490 A REVIEW OF THE 

to take sides ; but it was dishonorable for the head of tlie army 
to deceive his superior by violating his engagement with him. 
If he meant to surrender the office, he should have advised the 
President of his intention so to do. Not having done so, he 
exposed liimself to the charges of breach of faith and corrupt 
alliance with the party that was combatting the President ; con- 
duct wholly unchivalric, and unbecoming a man who filled the 
exalted position he occupied. His action and the surrounding 
circumstances, seemed to cast upon him a cloud of suspicion, 
inasmuch as he had for some time been rising into jjrominencc 
as the Presidential candidate of the Congressional party. The 
iNew Yoi'k Syracuse Convention of the Republican party, de- 
clared for General Grant for President, one day after the dispute 
between himself and President Johnson had been published in 
the public papers of the country. 

Affairs remained in this condition until the 21st of February, 
following, when President Johnson undertook the responsibility 
of removing Edwin M. Stanton, and appointed Lorenzo Thomas, 
Adjutant-General of the United States Army, to take his place 
as Secretary of War, ad inter Im. lie at once communicated, in 
a brief message to the Senate, the fact of the removal of Mr. 
Stanton and the appointment of General Thomas to take his 
place. Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, submitted the follow- 
ing preamble and resolution : 

" Whereas, The Senate has received and considered the communica- 
tion of the President, stating tliat he had removed Edwin M. Stanton, 
Secretary of War, and had designated the Adjutant-General of the 
Army to act as Secretary of War, ad interim, therefore, — 

" Resolved, By the Senate of the United States, that under the Consti- 
tution and Laws of the United States, the President has no power to 
i-emove the Secretary of War and designate any other officer to perform 
the duties of that office ad interiin." 

The radicals contended that under the Tenure of Office Act,* 

the President had no authority, without the consent of the 

* The first section of the Tenure of Office Act, of March 2d, 1867, was 
that, by means of which Congress limited the power ol the President 
over removals from office. The following is a copy of the first section : 

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States, in Congress assembled, that every pei'son holding any 
civil office, to which he has been appointed by, and with the advice and 
consent of the Senate ; and every pr^rson who may hereafter be appointed 
to any such office, and shall become duly qualified to act therein, is and 
shall be entitled to hold such office until a successor shall ha\*e been in 
like manner appointed ; Provided that the Secretaries of State, of the 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 4S1 

Senate, to remove the Secretary of TVar and appoint Lis suc- 
cessor. The Democrats and the Conservative Kepublicans, on 
the contrary, ai-gued that under the words of the law, the Presi- 
dent was not precluded from acting as he had done. After an 
animated discussion, the above resolution of Senator Wilson 
was adopted. 

A grand opportunity was now presented to Mr. Stevens, tho 
arch radical of the House, m the attempted removal of Edwin 
M. Stanton. It was water upon the mill of his political malice. 
The defeat of the impeachment movement, which had been 
headed by General Ashley, was galling to the Lancaster States- 
man. He afterwards made a strong effort to have it renewed, 
but without success. "When the essayed removal of Mr. Stanton 
was made known, Mr. Stevens was by general consent permitted 
to take the lead in the new impeachment undertaking, on account 
of the fierce hostility he was known to entertain towards Presi- 
dent Johnson. He, accordingly, on the 22d of February, for- 
mally reported in the House, from the Committee on Recon- 
struction, the attempted removal of Mr. Stanton ; and at tlie 
same time offered the following resolution : 

" Resolved, That Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, ba 
impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors." 

This resolution was discussed until the 24th, when it Vv^as 
adopted by 126 yeas to 4T nays. The war against the President 
was purely partisan, the Republicans supporting and the Demo- 
crats opposing impeachment.* 

After the adoption of the above resolution, the House selected 
Messrs. Stevens and Bingham to inform the Senate of their 
action. When they came to the Senate, Mr. Stevens said : 

"Mr. President: — In obedience to the order of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, we have appeared before you. In the name of the House of 

Treasury, of War, of the Navy, and of the Interior, the Postmaster-Gen- 
eral and the Attorney-General, shall hold their offices respectively for 
and during the terna of tlie President, by whom they liave been ap- 
pointed, and for one month thereafter, subject to removal, by and with 
the advice and consent of the Senate." 

* Considerable excitement pervaded the whole country, as the news 
concerning impeachment spread. John W. Geary, the radical Governor 
of Pennsylvania, telegraphed to Simon Cameron as follows: "The 
news to-day created a profound sensation in Pennsylvania. The spirit 
of 1861 seems again to pervade the K3ystone State. Troops are rapidly 
tendering ^^heir services to sustain the laws. Let Congress stand hrm." 
Similar tenders were made by leading Democrats to the President from 
different sections of the country. 



493 A REVIEW OF THE 

Representatives, and of all the people of the United States, we do im- 
peach Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, of high crimes 
and misdemeanors in offi:e ; and we further inform the Senate that the 
House of Representatives will, in due time, exhibit particular articles of 
impeachment against him, to make good the same ; and in their name 
we demand that the Senate take due order for tlie appiarauce of the said 
Andrew Johnson to ansAver to the said impeachment." 

Messrs. Bingham, Bontwell, Stevens, Wilson, of Iowa, Logan, 
of Illinois, Julian and "Ward, were selected by the House to pre- 
pare the articles of impeachment. Tlie committee at once 
entered upon tlie task, and in a few days was ready to submit 
the articles upon which it was determined to try the President. 
The commi1,tee reported in the House the series of impeachment 
articles, which, with those separately offered formed, in all, 
eleven. These were adopted by the House, March 2d, 1868. 
The first eight of these were based upon the attempted removal 
of Edwin M. Stanton, on February 21st. The ninth was based 
upon the instruction given by the President to General Emory, 
of Washington, on February 22d, 1868 ; and the tenth, upon 
the President's denunciation of Congress in his Chicago tour, 
during the year 1866. The last article accused the President of 
having, in the City of Washington, in his speech of August 
18th, 1866, declared that the Congress of the United States was 
an illegal body ; and in accordance with that view had, on the 
21st of February, attempted, without the consent of the Senate, 
to remove from office E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War. 

After the adoption of the Articles of Impeachment, the House 
of Representatives proceeded to choose the managers, who should 
conduct before the bar of the Senate, the prosecution against 
President Johnson. The managers chosen by the House were 
John A, Bingham, of Ohio ; George S. Boutwell, of Massachu- 
setts ; James F. Wilson, of Iowa ; John A. Logan, of Illinois ; 
Thomas Williams, of Pennsylvania; Benjamin F. Butler, of 
Massachusetts, and Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvanai, On 
March 4th, the Board of Managers, accompanied by the House 
as a Committee of the Whole, proceeded to the Senate in order 
to present the Articles «f Impeachment. Mr. Bingham, the 
Chairman of the Board of Managers, then said : 

" The Managers of the House of Representatives, by order of the 
House of Representatives, are ready at the bar of the Senate, if it please 
the Senate to hear them, to present Articles of Impeachment, in main- 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 493 

tenance of the impeachment prepared against Andrew Johnson, Presi- 
dent of the United States, by the House of Representatives." 

Then followed Speaker Wade's order to the Sergeant-at-Arms, 
who now made proclamation as follows ; 

*' Hear ye I Hear ye I All persons are commanded to keep silence on 
pain of imprisonment, while the House of Representatives is exhibiting 
to the United States Senate, Articles of Impeachment against Andrew 
Johnson, President of the United States." 

After this Mr, Bingham proceeded to read to the Senate, the 
eleven Articles of Impeachment. 

The Senate, on its part, moved in^ the matter, after Messrs. 
Stevens and Bingham on February 25th, had communicated the 
resolution of the House impeaching the President. On the 
same day a committee was appointed to take suitable action and 
report. Two of the memb3rs of this committee, Senators How- 
ard and Edmunds, waited upon Chief Justice Chase, and informed 
him of the action of the Senate. They also stated, that their 
committee proposed to prepare rules for tlie government of the 
Senate during the impeachment trial ; and the Chief Justice was 
politely informed that any suggestions from himself would be 
cheerfully received. But politeness precluded them from adding 
what their knowledge would have prompted ; that his views 
would only be accepted, so far as they might agree with those of 
the impeachers. The committee proceeded to prepare the rules, 
which the Senate adopted in its legislative c•lpacit3^ This 
metliod of adopting rules was objected to by the Democratic 
Members of the Senate, but without avail, being overruled by 
the majority, that was all powerful, as on former occasions. 
Chief Justice Chase addressed a letter to Senator Howard, like- 
wise taking exceptions to the Senate's mode of adopting rules to 
govern in the impeachment trial. He agreed with the Demo- 
cratic Senators, that the Senate had no right to prescribe rules 
for the trial, until constitutionally organized as a Court of 
Impeachment. The letter of the Chief Justice created consid- 
erable sensation among the impeachment Senators ; but the 
Senate proceeded, as had it not been written, and appointed a 
committee to wait upon and advise him of the trial, and request 
his attendance as the presiding officer. 

Steps were taken towards the organization of the Senatorial 
Court, on Thursday, the 5th of March. The Chief Justice entered 
and addressed the Senate on that day in the following words : 



494 A REVIEW OF THE 

"Senators, I am here in obedience to your notice, for tlie purpose of 
proceeding with you in forming a Court of Impeachment for the trial 
of Andrew Johnson, President of tlae United States. I am now ready 
to take the oatli." 

Associate Justice JSTelson then administered an oatli to the 

Chief Justice : 

"Tliat in all things appertaining to the trial of Andrew Johnson, 
President of the United States, now pending, I will do impartial justice 
according to the Constitution and Laws, so help me God." 

The same oath was then administered, separately, to each of 
the Senators. Objection was made, b^y Deniocratic Senators, to 
Senator Wade being sworn, and sitting as a member of the 
Court of Impeachment ; inasmuch as he, being the President of 
the Senate, would, in case of the conviction and removal of 
President Johnson, succeed to his office. It was argued that one 
in his position was too much interested to be a competent judge 
to try the President, as the rules of equity demanded ; but unblush- 
ing partisanship came to the rescue, and tlie revolutionists deter- 
mined that as he was not excluded by the Constitution, he should 
be sworn and permitted to sit as a judge upon tlie trial. 

After the Senators were sworn, the Chief Justice declared the 
organization of the Senate as a High Court of Impeachment. 
The rules adopted by the Senate in its legislative capacity, to 
regulate the trial, were upon the suggestion of the presiding 
officer, approved by it as a Court of Impeachment, The House 
managers being now advised of the organization of the High Court 
of the Kation, came before it ; and the Chairman, Mr. Bingham, 
arose and demanded of the Court that it take cognizance as to 
the appearance of Andrew Johnson, to answer the articles of 
impeachment which had been preferred against him. It was 
then ordered that a summons be issued requiring the appearance 
of the President before the bar of the Senate, on Friday, the 13th 
of March. 

On the day fixed. President Johnson appeared in the High 
Court of Impeachment, not personally, but by counsel. Henry 
Stansberry, B. R. Curtis, Thomas A. R. Nelson, William M. 
Evarts, and William S. Groesbeck, all intellectual legal gentle- 
men, appeared as the President's defenders. His attorneys asked 
the Court to allow their client forty days to prepare his answer ; 
but because Benjamin F. Butler and others wished the trial to 
proceed " at railroad sjpeed^ only ten days were granted. March 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMEEICA. 435 

23d was fixed for filing tlie President's answer. Wlien tins day 
arrived, it was submitted. It answered separately the whole of 
the eleven articles of impeachment. As to the first eight of 
these, the President contended that the Tenure of Office Act, of 
March 2d, 1867, which precluded him from removing subordinate 
officials, without the consent of the Senate, was unconstitutional. 
lie further contended, that even under the words of that act, he 
was not prevented from removing Edwin M. Stanton, as he was 
charged with attempting; and that, in doing so, he had violated 
neither the Constitution nor the law of Congress. He also de- 
nied that he was guilty, as the ninth article accused him, of hav- 
ing been, in his interview with General Emory, of Washington, 
or in any of the particulars, as he tlierein stood charged. He 
claimed, as a citizen of the United States, that he was fully war^ 
ranted in expressing, as other men, his views on political affairs ; 
and that, consequently, he was not culpable, as charged in the 
tenth and eleventh articles, for the cited speeches which he had 
made. A replication to the President's ausvv^er, was without 
delay prepared; and having been adopted in the House by 115 
yeas, to 36 nays, was filed by the managers in the Court of Im- 
peachment, March 21th. The legal pleadings being now com- 
pleted, the ardent impcachers, Sumner and his associates, as they 
had from the beginning urged, wished the trial to proceed at 
once ; but it was again postponed until March 30th, to allow the 
President a short time finally to prepare for his defense. 

On Monday, March 30th, Benjamin F. Butler opened the case 
for the managers in a speech, in which he sustained his view of 
the law, and stated the evidence which they proposed to adduce. 
Witnesses were then called by the managers, to prove the facts 
as alleged in the several articles of impeachinent. Both oral and 
documentary evidence were admitted. The presentation of the 
evidence was managed mainly by General Butler, who displayed 
great adroitness and legal ability in this particular. His dex- 
terity, as a criminal lawyer, shone conspicuous on this occasion. 
The Chief Justice was allowed the right of h:iving a casting vote, 
where the Senate should be equally divided, although the radi- 
cals, led by Senator Sumner, sought to deprive him of this priv- 
ilege. He was also accorded the privilege of primarily deciding 
upon the admissibility of evidence ; his decision, however, was 
subject to reversal, upon an appeal to the Senate. The produc- 



493 A REVIEW OF THE 

tion of testimony by the managers consumed one week, the 
prosecution resting upon April 4:th. The court of impeachment 
then adjourned until Thursday, April 9th. This additional time 
was allowed to the President and his counsel, to enable them to 
prepare and arrange the evidence which they intended to adduce 
in behalf of the defense. 

Upon the meeting of the Impeachment Court, at the time to 
which it stood adjourned, Judge Curtis opened for Andrew 
Johnson in a logical, learned and argumentative speech, presenting 
the President's defense in the manner he believed the evidence 
and the law would sustain him. He resumed and concluded his 
epeech on the following day; April 10th. Witnesses were next 
examined for the defense, amongst whom Generals Thomas and 
Sherman were conspicuous. As to the motive of the President, 
in the attempted removal of E. M. Stanton, evidence of his 
statements to General Sherman was offered in evidence to repel 
what had been proven by the managers. Considerable dispute 
arose over the admission of General Sherman's testimony on 
this point, he being produced to detail remarks of the President, 
showing his intention in the removal of the Secretary of War. 
The admission of this testimony M^as strongly combattcd and 
refused ; but was afterwards somewhat admitted. Many strong 
legal conflicts, took place between the managers led by General 
Butler and the President's skillful attorneys. The hero of Fort 
Fisher, was the prominent champion on the side of the House 
Managers, in these encounters, and he was severely accused of 
attempting to bully the President's counsel. In that, however, 
he sio-nally failed. Mr. Stevens was too prostrated during the 
whole proceeding, to take any but a subordinate part. In his 
younger years, on such a trial, he would have shone as a star of 
the first magnitude. On the 20th of April, the evidence on both 
sides was closed, and the Court adjourned until April 22d. 

The evidence in this important trial was rather formal in its 
character, as the facts were in the main undisputed. The evi- 
dence adduced by the managers, was chiefly to prove the facts 
alleo"ed in the articles of impeachment, as was likewise, that for 
the defense, in order to sustain the assertions contained in the 
President's answer. The statements and counter-statements 
must in law, of necessity be proven ; but the dispute was more 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 437 

legal In its iicature than dependent upon facts, charged upon one 
side and denied upon the other. 

On AVednesdaj, April 22d, the legal discussion began in a 
well prepared speech, delivei-ed by George S. Bout well, which 
occuj isd the attention of the Senate that and most of the fol'.o^v- 
ing day. Judge Nelson followed in an able discourse in behalf of 
the President, which he finished April 2J:th. ¥7'illiam S. Groesbeck 
on the same side, addressed the Court in an argumentative and 
ornate speech, on that and the following day. Thaddcus Stevens, 
one of the managers, read a carefully prepared speech, on Monday, 
April 27th ; and Thomas AVilliams, another manager, occupied 
the balance of that and the succeeding day in the delivery of his 
argument. AVilliam M. Evarts followed for the defense, makino- 
the star speech of the trial, which engaged the attention of the 
Senatorial Court from April 2Sth to Ma}^ 1st, four days. Henry 
Stansberry began his speech May 1st, and ended it on the next 
da_7. Manager Bingham began the closing argument May 4th, 
which 03cupied him tlu'ee days, conchiding it May 6th. 

The legal arguments being ended, the Senate sitting as a 
Court, now spent some time in discussing and determining upon 
the method of taking the vote upon the Articles of Impeach- 
ment. An adjournment was then carried until Monrlay, May 
11th, "When the Court re-assembled, in accordance with an 
adopted rule, fifteen minutes were granted to each Senator to 
express his views upon impeachment, and the guilt or innocence 
of the President, Four independent Republican Senators, 
Messrs. Grimes, Fessenden, Trumbull and Henderson, openly 
declared themselves against conviction. This was a iriofhtful 
bomb in the radical camp. The impeachers became alarmed. 
Th3 victory which the zealots, on account of partisan sub- 
serviency, had scarcely doubted, Avas already in extreme danger. 
They seemed to descry the finger of doom, writing the verdict 
of Presidential acquittal upon the walls of the Senate Chamber. 
Despair drove them to an adjournment until the ICth of May, in 
order to see if, in the meantime, the power of party tyranny 
would not be able to compel a sufiicient number of uuM'illing 
Senators to obey those who claimed to be their political masters. 

From this time up to the re-assembling of the Senatorial 
Court, the most unjustifiable means were resorted to by the bitter 
political enemies of the President, to influence Senators who 



498 A EEVIEW OF THE 

were regarded as doubtful, to vote for conviction. The wliole 
weight of abuie, of an intensely partisan press, was brought to 
bear upon Senators, in order to force them to yield to what was 
made to seem as a pressing public opinion. Senators were ad- 
dressed by telegraph, letter,"^-' and other\vis3 to stand by their 
party, and not desert it in the hour of its deepest distress. They 
were threatened by prominent party leaders with political ostra- 
cism, should they choose to exercise the freedom of their own 
judgment, and vote for the acquittal of Andrew Johnson. The 
assertion of Mr. Stevens was accepted as the gospel of radicalism, 
to which all the faithful must subscribe, viz : tlicit the failure of 
imjpeaclimentj would he the death of the Ilej)%d)lican j^arty. The 
Kepublican Senators, therefore, who had expressed themselves as 
opposed to the conviction of the President, were for several days 
the targets of the most Virulent and malicious vituperation, t'lat 
ever emenated from a partisan press. Besides this unbounded 
abuse of the known and unknown recreant Senators, the most 
desperate expedients, for insuring the conviction of the President, 
were proposed by unprincipled journalists and others, amongst 
whom the editor of the Philadelphia Press{\- had for years borne 
a super-eminent rank. 

* The radical Congressmen from Missouri, addressed Senator Henderson, 
of that State, the following impertinent letter : 

WASmNGTON, May 12th, 1868. 
Hon. John B. Henderson, U. S. Senate : 

Sir : — On a consultation of the Republican Members of the House of 
Representatives from Missouri, in view of your position o:i the Impeach- 
ment Articles, we ask you to withhold your vote on any Article, uj o i 
which 3'ou cannot vote' affirmatively. This request is made, because we 
believe the loyal people of the United States demard the Immediate 
removal of Andrew Johnson from the office of President of the United 
States. Respectfully, 

GEORGE W. ANDERSON, 
JOSEPH AV. McCLURG, 
WILLIAM A. PILE. 
BENJAMIN F. LOAN, 
C. A. NEWCOMB, 
JOHN F. BENJAMIN, 
JOSEPH J. GRAVELY. 
fThe Philadelphia Press of May 13th, 1868, containel the fo lowing 
sentiments : " The Senate sitting, for the trial of Andrew Johnson, is 
according to the argument of the counsel for the defense, purely a court, 
subject to all the incidents, and following in its actions and practice, all 
the analogies of a judicial tribunal. This declaration they insist on, 
and repeat every time one of them addresses the Chief Justice. They 
have prepared and carefully observed, a formula involving thid theory. 
Now, the C nirt never dies. If one of the Judges, or all of them die, or 
if their terms expire, the Court still lives in their successors. The cases 
are not discontinued, or affectad by the change. The outgoing of one 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 409 

The Senatorial Court met, according to adjournment, on the 
IGth of May, and proceeded to vote on the eleventh article of 
impeachment, which many regarded as the strongest of the series. 
The result of the vote was, thirty-iive for conviction to nineteen 
for acquittal. The Constitution requiring two-thirds of the 
Senate to pronounce the President guilty, he was declared by the 
Chief Justice as acquitted on this article. Seven Senators, who 
bad up to this time co-operated with the revolutionists, voted 
with the Democrats for the acquittal of President Johnson. 
These were William Pitt Fessenden, of Maine ; J. S. Fowler, of 
Tennessee : James W. Grimes, of Iowa ; John B. Henderson, 
of Missouri ; E. G. Ross, of Kansas ; Lyman Trumbull, of Illi- 
nois ; and Peter G. Van Winkle, of West Virginia. The im- 
peachers now had but one hope left, and that lay in another 
adjournment, to see what additional party threats might yet be 
able to effect. 

An adjournment took place, until May 26th. The powers of 
party terrorism were again subsidized with all the effort that 
fanatical despair could render. It w^as, without doubt, supposed 
that the Chicago Convention, which was about to assemble, would 
w^ork some inner awe within those who aspired to be leaders in 
the party ranks ; and some rebukes from that body may even 
have been anticipated. General Grant was to be nominated as 
the Presidential candidate of the Lake City Conclave. This 
occurred on May 21st. His august name, now almost hailed as 
Imjperator^ would lend additional sanction to his already ex- 
pressed opinion, that the conviction of President Johnson was a 
necessity. The 26th of May arrived. The Congressional Court 
re-convened for the last time. A vote was taken upon the 
second article of impeachment, with the same result as on the 
eleventh. The third also was voted on, but with no chano-e. 
The seven recreant Senators yet remained obdurate in their 
apostasy to the revolution, w^hose principles they had so long and 
so faithfully served. Impeachment had failed. The High Court 

Judge, or the incoming of another, does not and cannot have any bear- 
ing on the decision of the cases on ilie docket. Now, if the tiation in 
this hour of her extremity, needs loyal votes in the Senate, let the loyal 
majority admit at once the Senators from the 7iewly reconstructed and re- 
gennrated State of Arkansas. They are standing, waiting at the door. 
It is a superfluous caution that keeps them out. Bring in two, if there is 
need of them, patriot Senators from Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and the 
Carolinas. 



300 A REVIEW OF THE 

now adjourned sine die ; and E. M. Stanton, on the same day, 
advised the President that he had relinquished charge of the 
War Department. The partisan trial to depose an American 
President was now become an Ilhmi fiiit of history. 

The revolution was first checked in the acquittal of Andrew 
Johnson. But the check was only of the same kind, though in 
effect superior to that produced by the conservative reaction, led 
by Senators Cowan, Dixon and Doolittle ; and which the Presi- 
dential resistance served to concentrate. The revolutionary force 
was partially stemmed by the apparent conservatism of the seven 
Republican Senators, ranging themselves for once with the Demo- 
crats, who had earnestly striven against the current since first it 
arose ; and with somewhat similar effect as regarded themselves. 
The Democracy had been exiled ; and likewise the Conservative 
Republicans, who from time to time had joined them in their 
efforts to resist the storm of fury, were consigned to the same 
quarters to await the call of their countrymen, when repose 
should again have taught them the severe but truthful lessons of 
history and experience. 

The revolution must of necessity find its martyrs ; and those 
who contributed towards its development were quite as deserving 
of that lot as those who patriotically strove to prevent it. But 
are the seven Republican nominal conservatives, whose votes 
saved Andrew Johnson from bemg deposed as President of the 
United States, entitled to any especial honor because of their 
action ? So far as they then contributed to defeat the objects of 
the revolutionists, in one particular, they acted a worthy part. 
They, however, only deserve honor so far as they were influenced 
by motives of pure patriotism. From the time the sectional 
party first organized, most of these men had steadily lent their ad- 
hesion to nearly all the views of that dangerous organization ; 
and all of them, from the outbreak of the rebellion, endorsed 
most of the revolutionary principles of their party up to the 
impeachment of the President. In preventing the President's 
deposition, their alarm simply aroused them to the necessity of 
arresting this new current of the revolution that had far exceeded 
their anticipations ; and which was threatening to prostrate all 
the land marks of constitutional government. Is that, however, 
patriotism, which forbears to strike further out of dread for 
retroactive consequences % 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 501 

If fear, or other like motive, induced the action of the revolu- 
tionary Senators, who voted for the acquittal of the President, 
its effect was but of brief duration. The dog speedily returned to 
his vomit again. The pretended conservatives were soon in alli- 
ance with their old political associates. They were begotten to 
political fame of the revolution ; and its children they must re- 
main. IS^either can the Ethiopian change his skin, nor the leopard 
his spots. Fit companions of revolutionists, the Republican anti- 
impcachers, as truants, returned to their camp to be guarded and 
court-marshalled for their insubordination; but faithfully to 
renew their service with their old masters. In consummating 
the unconstitutional legislation, by which it was pretended to 
restore the seceded States, to their normal rights of representa- 
tion in the Union ; who were more efficient actors than Trumbull, 
Fessenden and others of the non-convicting Senators ? In one 
aspect, their recurring reason stemmed the revolution ; in another 
their fanaticism was farther accompanying it on its doleful mis- 
sion of death. 



603 A REVIEW OF THE 



CHAPTER XXXir. 

DEATH OF MR. STEVENS, WITH CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 

The present work carries the historic thread of the revolution 
up to August 11th, 1868. On that day Thaddeus Stevens, the 
,/j■^ corjpheus of the Congressional revolutionists, ended his earthly 
career, leaving the seeds which he and his associates had sown, to 
germinate and yield their natural fruit. Our subject died in 
AV^ashiiigton City, the scene of his most famous labors, after an 
llness of some months, which terminated in his demise. Hav- 
ing been brought to his home in Lancaster, he was buried in 
the cemetery of liis own selection, because none were precluded 
from interment within its enclosure, on account of race or color. 
In his funeral procession, he received the especial homage of that 
race, for which he was believed to have devoted his crowning 
efforts. Considerable numbers of these with others, followed 
his remains to their hist resting place. A handsome monument 
in Shreiner's Cemetery marks his sepulchre. 

But in the selection of Mr. Stevens, as the man whose political 
career should span the development and progress of the revolu- 
tion which has been sketched, he was in no wise chosen as a sub- 
ject for eulogium or laudation ; but simply as typical of those 
who have subverted pure republicanism in the wild and chimeri- 
cal hope of reaching what is wholly unattainable under any form 
of government. His career as a citizen and lawyer, is left 
mainly for others to portray, who have taste for this species of 
literature. His benevolence and witticism, peculiar traits de- 
veloped by him, have likewise been omitted. The former of 
these, was in his hands simply an instrument by which he engi- 
neered his way to power in a government, which his reason dis- 
approved. Lacking pure purpose, he was ready to embrace any 
means to attain the objects of his ambitious aspirations ; and his 
shrewdness assured him that nothing would so attach the unthink- 
ing to his standard, as the favors he bestowed upon them. Had 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 503 

Tinselfisli benevolence influenced liis seeming charities, he would 
in other respects also, have shone as a moral luminarj'- of his age 
and nation ; and he would have left behind him, an impress of 
virtue never to be eradicated. But he passed awaj, having 
simply towered as an able, adroit, skillful lawyer, and an extreme 
advocate of human equality, regardless of consequences. In his 
advocacy, however, of this equality, he evinced to the philosophic 
mind, the demagogue; as only sincere, honest fanatics could ad- 
vocate a doctrine that reason, from the origin of recorded history, 
has disproved. But Mr. Stevens was no fanatic. Ilis intellectu- 
ality raised him high above all fanaticism, and enabled him to 
scan its strength, and adroitly use it as a caparisoned charger to 
ride to the goal of his political ambition. He fully understood 
the fanatics of his age, and clearly perceived, that paying court 
to their sentiments, was the only method by which he and his 
party, could overthrow the Constitutional Democracy. This he 
did, originally impelled out of personal hatred to men, Avho for 
years had been instrumental in excluding him from coveted posts 
of honor to which he had aspired.* Thrown thus into antago- 
nism with the chivalric spirits, who controlled the old j)olitical 
parties, he was compelled to And his supporters amongst the in- 
congruous herd of discontented agitators, whom birth and posi- 
tion consign to subordination and vassalage, and who are ever 
eady to combat their own and the imaginary ills of others. 

Some concluding observations and reflections upon the course 
of events since the demise of Mr. Stevens, will not be deemed 
as is presumed, inappropriately appended in this, the last chajoter 
of the work. Only in this way can the dangerous character of 
the revolutionary men of the Stevens type be fully understood. 
The American Government, up to the j^eriod of the advent of 
fanaticism to power, had justly acquired the reputation of being 
the model Republic of the world. The Union was the promised 
land of peace, plenty and happiness for the oppressed of Europe. 

*His confidential friends say, that in the camiDaign of 1844, whilst 
pretending to be the supporter of Henry Clay for Piesident, he visited 
New York and other Northern States, and urged the Abolitionists to 
support Bh-ney, so as to abstract a sufficient number of votes from Clay 
to cause his defeat. A confidential friend of Mr. Stevens, a man of 
prominence, who wa's an Abolitionist, was heard to remark about that 
time, that his two-faced action in this particular, was deserving o." com- 
mendation. Only an Abolitionist or an unprincipled knave could com- 
u^end such conduct. 



504 A EEVIEW OF THE 

A succession of honorable Statesmen had risen to eminence in 
the United States, that were worthy to be compared with the 
noblest personages of ancient or modern times. The Senate, 
adorned by the intellects of the Clays, Websters and Calhonns, 
was fully the peer of that of ancient Rome in her palmy days. 
From its formation the Government, as a kind of foster mother, 
had been receiving new accessions of territory, casting her pro- 
tecting folds around the acceding acquisitions ; and was so enlarg- 
ing her domain as if purposing ultimately to embrace the whole 
Western continent. All this development and prosperity was 
the fruit of Jeffersonian Democracy and State right equality. 

But how soon was the mighty fallen. 'No sooner had the ideas 
of Seward, Sumner and Giddings triumphed in the election of 
Abraham Liacoln, than the peaceful and prosperous days of the 
Republic ended. The jjreliminary crusade that led to this event, 
had been subverting the principles of morality and sound Chris- 
tian purity, the pillars of all stable government. The doctrine, 
that a hii^her law* than the Constitution should regulate human 



* The prevailing dishonesty and corruption of our country, take their 
source in the princip.es of the "higher law," and in the growing disbelief 
in the old systems of morality, wliich recognized all property as sacred 
and inviolable. The ■'Idgher (aw " is itself an etilux of modern infidedty, 
which is rapidly spreading its deadening blight over the fair fields of 
modern civilization ; and in no country are its effects so sad as in 
America, the boasted land of liberty. Wnere the mosc extreme doctrines 
of disbelief can with freedom be discussed and propagated, it is reason- 
able to find the natural results of such indoctrination. The United States 
are now suffering from consequences to i^rouuced, and will continue 
to suffer, until the causes themselves be eradicated and fully removea. 

The " liigher law " doctrine being the development of the infidelity 
of the age, finds its chief nourishment in the far-famed Puritan free 
school by stem o.f America. This S} stem of instruction is producing 
its desolating effects in our country, because morality and biblical in- 
struction are not made essential parts of the tuitional work. Aichibald 
Alison, a philosophic author, says : ''Education, if not based on religioua 
tuition, is worse than useless; and every day's exper.ence is adding addi- 
tional confirmation to the eternal truth." — [Alison on Population, Vol. 2, 
p. 292.] 

M. Cousin, another European writer of celebrity, uses the following 
language : " Religion is, in my eyes, the best — perhaps the only — basis of 
instruction. I know a little of Europe, and I have never wi xiessed any 
good popular schools where Christianity was wanting. The more 1 
reflect upon the tubject the more I am convinced with the directors of 
, the Ecoles Normalcs and the ministerial counselors, that we must go 
hand in hand with the clergy in order to instruct ihe people and make 
religious education a special and large part of instruction in our primary 
schools. I am not ignorant that these suggestions will sound ill in the 
ears of some, and tiiat in Paris I shall be looked upon as excessive. y 
devout ; but it is from Berlin, nevertheless, not Rome, that I write. He 
who speaks to you is a philosopher, one looked on with an evil eye, p.nd 
even i^ersecutea by the priesthood ; but who knows human nature and 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 535 

action, "was destructive of all governmental subordination ; and 
set up each individual's opinion as the norm that should regulate 
his obedience as a citizen. The refusal of the Abolitionists to 
acquiesce, in the requirements of the Fugitive Slave Law, was 
in itself revolutionary and destructive of all government. In 
l^lacing themselves in opposition to the rendition of fugitive 
slav-es, they became robbers of the property of their countrymen, 
equally guilty, in a moral aspect, as they who purloin or other- 
wise destroy what belongs to another. Each slave that escaped 
from his Southern master, was his legal j)roperty ; and the men 
who aided him in his escape, and those who justilied this action, 
wjre the detroyers of society, and responsible fcr all the ills that 
America has suffered since the commencement of the rebellion 
up to the present time ; and also for those which destiny has in 
store for her. They were the infidel and wicked subverters of 
morality and rectitude of life ; and were they who opened 
wide the flood-gates of demoralization, which permitted the cur- 
rent of corruption to flow forth with such impetuosity, that it 



history too well not to regard religion as an indestructible power, and 
Christianity, when rightly inculcated, as an essential instrument for 
civilizing mankind, and a necessary support to those on wiiom society 
imposes hard and humble duties, uiiclieered by the hojDe of future for- 
tune or the consolations of self-love." — [Rapport sur 1' Instruction de 
r AUemagne, p. 273.] 

Democracy, under the non -religious free school system of our country, 
is as a vessel set adrift upon the stormy ocean of life without rudder or 
helmsman, and permitted to float as the stomas of passion may beat upon 
it. A gloomy future is in store for free government, if some means be 
not devised to change the present morality-destroying system of popular 
instruction, by which the youth of our country shall be uadoctrinated in 
the principles of honor, virtue and truth, as well as made familiar with 
the developments of intellectual culture. The church and the school- 
house must again be united, or corruption and demoralization will sink 
republican government in a vortex of social ruin. 

The destruction now threatening our country, in the upheavals of im- 
morality and national corruption that are arrismg all over tiie land, un- 
mistakably traces its origin to the free school system of instruction as at 
present conducted. For years the bible, the vacle mecum of Christian 
communities, has been expelled from the schools of our country ; and 
the flood of impiety whicb, on that account, has penetrated them, is now 
showing its results in every village and hamlet from Maine to California, 
Whilst it was retained, it was the flaming sword that guarded against 
the entrance of the evil influences that ai-e now disp ayiug their baneful 
fruits in the high places of the nation. Its return must be secured, or 
liberty, tliat solace of freemen, will expire in the night of gloom that is 
fast tetting upon our country. 

And, if a reason be sought why corruption is more highly rearing its 
head under revolutionary Republican, than under constitut.onal Demo- 
cratic rule, it is found in the f ict that the leaders of the foi-mer party, 
contra-distinguished from tlieir opponents, prufess not to square their 
opinions with the teaching of revelation nor with the moral maxims of 



506 A REVIEW OF THE 

now threatens to wash away all the defences of truth, vh'tue and 
and honor. 

These minions of Plutonic darkness, drove the defenders of 
truth and the Constitution off the held of conflict and captured 
the citadels of virtue. Under the hypocritical pretence of ele- 
vating universal humanity to absolute equality, by means of the 
far-famed free schools, from which all biblical and moral instruc- 
tion, as far as possible, was excluded, they set out virtually to 
infidelize the world, and consign Christianity to the fabled de- 
posits of past ages. Their crusade against slavery was an insidi- 
ous but cowardly attack upon the truths and morality of the 
Christian system. The original founders of their school and 
political maxims, were French Encyclopaedists and British free- 
thinkers ; and the ease with which large numbers of the Chris- 
tian clergy were seduced into the support of revolutionary 
abolitionism, either showed the latter's lack of discernment, or 
proved them to be wolves in sheep's clothing, Vvdio were simply 
fattening upon the stipends of their needy parishioners. Had 



the ancient philosophers. Did not Anson V. Burlingame, one of the 
high priests of Republicanism, demand an anti-slavery Bible and ananti- 
slavery Ood? In his utterances the spirit of the "higher law" was 
speaking, in unmistakable words, the full demands of tne infidel San- 
hedrim. And we see all around us the results of the new teaching, in 
the steady decline of moral sensibility. A R3publican autlior is forced 
to make the following admission : " The fact is humiliating that the 
tone of American life is lower since the war, which was supposed to be 
about to usher in a new era of national honor and culture, than it was 
before. It may be, indeed, that we are in a state of transition from 
lower to liigher aim;:; ; but the transition is very bewildering and lasts a 
Tery long time. The promised light refuses to come. The days grow 
darker every day, and tlie thoughtful patriot can dimly see litte more 
than a broa I and dismal waste, crowded with men ravenous for gain ; 
while those wlio desire and seek better things are trampled under foot 
like dogs." — [Dix's American State, p. 15.] 

But, notwithstanding, it is apparent that the moral tone is stea':lily 
declining, do not Republican propagandists still vaunt their superior in- 
telligence over their political pjrtisans, and boast that their ranks are 
composed of the refinement and intelligence of the country 'i Do they 
not Jaud their superior devotion to ths free school system of A iierica ; 
and point to the culture which their voters display 'i And do they not 
refer sneeringly to the masses of the Democratic party, and gibe them 
for lack of the.r kind of intelligence ? The contrast between the two 
parties (the negroes being excluded) is palpable and conceded ; and it is 
to the credit of the Democratic party, that its ranks do not possess the 
irreligious intelligence of their opponents. But they do liave tha: which 
enrolls lliem far above their political enemies. They liave sup.^rior moral 
training and a superior mural sense. Theirs is yet the moral sense of 
the olden periods, before corruption had made its desolating im-oads, 
induced by a false training, that is eating out the vitals of purity and 
revex'ence for right. Plato declared that "General ignorance is neither 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 507 

these 'clergymen and their followers looked around them, they 
would have found themselves marshalled by the bold, brazen in- 
fide.'s of the North; and every stroke these poor deluded slaves 
s'ruck, in behalf of I'ationalistic abolitionism, fell with all its force 
upon biblical revelAt'oii and the revered truths of the Christian 
religion. But they struck, not then being able to distinguish 
their friends from their enemies. 

And though, at length, conscious that the American body 
politic is suffering from excruciating pains, they are still unable 
to comprehend what has given rise to the national disease. They 
ignorantly impute all our disorders to the Southern rebellion ; 
and accuse the people of the South as the guilty agents in pro- 
ducing that sorrowful struggle between the people of the two 
sections. The late civil war has been largely instrumental in 
causing the condition of affairs by which we are now surrounded ; 
yet numerous other agencies must also be considered, for a full 
solution of the causes of our troubles. False doctrine has been 
the germinating source of our national calamities. The war 



the greatest evil nor the worst to be dreaded." Ignorance, indeed, is a 
blessing, unless intelligence be iinjjarted in schools of virtue and moral 
purity. 

But by how much the vaunted intellectual intelligence of the Repub- 
lican party surpasses that of its antagonist, bj^ so mucii has the tone of 
American life declined since tlie advent of that cultured organizat on to 
power in 1861. And thus by contrast is seen the danger tiiat menaces 
free government in sustaining a system of education, that aims simply 
to develop the intellect of humanity, wliilst ignoring and leaving its 
moral sense to perisli. 

What else, save a corruptio'i germinator, could a party be, the promi- 
nent leaders of which dehantly cast aside moral restraint, as inculcated 
in the bible and by the Christian church ; and simply look to a higher 
law lor the guidance that humanity requires? For it is an undeniable 
fact, that the infldel hordes of the North naturally found their home in 
the organization that named itself Republican. Tuey were the advanced 
levelers of the races ; and as full equality could not take place until 
property was also equalized, it Avas to be expected that they would use 
all their efforts to effect such equalization. The public corruption and 
dishonesty of the last tifteen years, are but part of the equalizing pi-o- 
cess that these leaders advocate. Having no moral regard for individual 
rights, like robbers they feel themselves warranted m plundering fi'om 
others as far as they have the power to do so ; and the only barrier to 
their advances is dread of detection. It is thus that the principle of 
communism is working in the body politic, and producing the loatiisome 
festering in our social and official corporations. 

Does it not evince almost a putrid condition of the moral sense, when 
the higliest Court of the nation could make a decision in palpable viola- 
tion of the Constitution of the country ? And what communistic drauglits 
these same judges must have imbioei!, before they could have be-joine so 
intoxicated as to render a decision ignoring the fundamental principles 
of justice? Tliey must have been apt pupils of the higher law school ; 
and Lave received with humble docility the new gospel of Seward, Bur- 



5C8 A REVIEW OF THE 

itself, like tlie other evils, with which we have been and are 
aSiieted, was produced by the dissemination of spurious princi- 
ples, that were antagonistic to republican institutions. It was 
caused by the officious effort of ^Northern intermedlers, to pluck 
the mote out of their brother's eye, without being conscious of 
the beam that clouded their own visions. 

The war being produced by the anti-constitutional interference 
of a part}', whose corner-stone principle was sectional hate, it 
should not be suppos3d that the bcdy politia of our country could 
ever recover its wonted strength, until all the deadly virus would 
be totally expelled from the system. The war upon the part of 
the Southern people, therefore, was but an effort of nature which 
the republic made to cast off" the offensive matter, which was 
threatening death to constitutional liberty. The effort would 
have been successful, but for the fact that the vigor of healthy 
life was dissolved in the disease of fanaticism which had over- 
taken our country. And all the subsequent struggles undergone 
to overthrow the policy of the revolution, were made in the interest 
of republican government. The Democracy, being the nat- 
ural party of the Republic, could not die as long as any hope 
for free government remained. Bat the principles of the party 
of revolution, being the efflux of despotism, must be overthrown, 
or the Republic can never again be restored to its normal condi- 
tion. As it now exists, it is simply a Republic in name, its 
cardinal principles having perished. It is a mockery to call our 
government a republic, until the people of every section of 
our common country shall have amicably adjusted all their diffi- 
culties since the beginning of the war; friimad a new Constitu- 
tion, or remedied the old one so as to make it satisfactory to all ; 

lingame and their worthy confreres. No doubt they passed a creditable 
examiiiatiou in communistic exegesis before the judicial ermine had 
fallen upoii them. Even members of the Kepublican party are com- 
pelled to acknowledge that our iirevail.ng corruption has been aided by 
the conduct of men in high places. W. G. Dix, an autlior who speaks 
in eulogiblic terms of Lincoln and Sumner, says : " Who can wondt r 
as the corruption which prevails in so many departments of the Govern- 
ment, and jU every nook and corner of the land, wiien a judgment of 
the Supreme Court of the United States, however just or leg.il its uiten- 
tion, is universally understood to permit and sanction fraud i' * * * 
The resignation of those Judges of the Supreme Court, who pronounced 
irredeemable greeenbacks lawful money fo.- the iJ.iyment of jirevious 
debts, contracted to be paid in gold or its equivalent, would do more 
than anything else to redeem the nonor of our highest tiibunal, and to 
bring public opinion back to its bearings on Unanc.al questions." — {The 
American State, pp. 34 and 35. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 509 

and afterwards in State conventions shall have freely adopted the 
same. Then, and not before, will peace, prosperity and happiness 
return to our united country ; and, as before, gladness cover our land 
as the waters cover the sea. If, however, this be impossible to be 
reached, on account of the turbulent elements of our composition, 
then without further dissembling let the declaration be made, that 
republican government has proved a failure ; that the irrational 
efforts to secure what God opposes, uni\*ersal equalitj', have, instead 
of bringing liberty, only sunk the strugglers deeper in the slough of 
despotism ; and then let the inevitable consequences be accepted ; 
let constitutional monarchies arise where the republic, whilst 
governed by wisdom and virtue, flourished, and let the world- 
struffo-le forever end. "Who is unable to see that our Govern- 
ment, as conducted by so-called Republicanism, since its advent to 
power has been infinitely worse than the constitutional monarchy 
of Great Britain ? 

The Abolition party being based upon false principles, it of 
necessity produced an entire disintegration of our whole repub- 
lican system of government. The history of the past fifteen 
years has demonstrated its workings. Coming into power as the 
pronounced advocate of moral delinquency, could abolition rule 
do ought else than produce tlie miserable desolation of principle 
which now covers our country from ocean to ocean. No other 
result was possible to occur, when the moral lepers, who con- 
trolled the underground railroads and their tutors, had seized 
control of the reins of government. Men who made a boast of 
their dexterity in securing the safe passage of fugitives to Canada 
and elsewhere, were suitable instruments to degrade virtuous 
tone throughout the community ; and produce from Maine to 
California, that condition of moral putrefaction which is rapidly 
eating out the vitals of truth, honor and upright manhood. 
Having no respect for the immutable laws, which God has im- 
planted upon the face of being, they were ready to set aside all 
the instruction of past ages, and reconstruct society in accord- 
ance with their wild and unhallowed conceptions. Atheists in 
disguise, and infidels in profession, they had no regard for the 
Christian code, nor even for the moral maxims of the Greek and 
Roman philosophers. The felon of Charlestown was the exem- 
plar they worshipped, and his maxims formed their guide as 
citizens and rulers. 



510 A REVIEW OF THE 

It was easy for such men, to violate as tliey did, the Federal 
Consititntioii, lirst in making war against the South, and after- 
wards in its prosecution. No oaths were binding upon them, 
most of them entertaining no belief in a future state of exist- 
ence. They came into power, therefore, determined to destroy 
Southern society, and make it in future conform with their ideas, 
drawn from the revolutionary schools of France, where belief in 
a Deity is scoffed to the encore. The passage of the Legal 
Tender Bill, Avhich declared that all debts, whether contracted 
before or subsequent to its enactment, should be paid by the 
notes issued by the Government, was simply the work of men 
destitute of moral obligation, and displayed their dangerous 
character. Necessity, they plead, as justifying their action, 
thereby admitting, that the Constitution clothed them with no such 
authorit_y. What worse do banditti, pirates and other public rob- 
bers, than did the American Congress, in the enactment of the 
unjust and unconstitutional law, which permitted all debtors to 
discharge their obligations with less sums of money than they owed 
their creditors. Robbers embark in a career, in which necessity 
compels them to seize the property of others, in order to support 
their existence. The Abolition Congress and President Lincoln 
did the same. They entered, in violation of the Constitution, 
upon a war to subjugate and ruin the Southern people. Necessity 
compelled them to enact the Legal Tender Bill in order, under 
guise of law, to be able to subsidize, by a false iinancial system, 
the wealth of the American people, or abandon their unrighteous 
undertaking. But for their violations of sacred obligation, in 
having done so, the compensater of human action, as an avenging 
Deity, will yet sing songs of infamy over the tombs of those, 
who trampled upon and desecrated her holy laws. 

The inspired book advises us, that we are to judge the tree by 
its fruits. In the application of this test to the political parties 
of our country, wliat a verdict of doom, at this time, strikes the 
vision of the revolutionary party ; that party which has almost 
sunk the Ship of State in the billows of misgovernment and 
social corruption ? It is, as many of their shrewd leaders have 
already expressed it, enough to make them shudder at the 
thought of the Democracy returning to power. They see the tide 
of io-nominy slowly rolling, that is to cover them forever, unless 
hy perjury, bribery, and the perversion of the elective franchise 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA, 511 

they can successfully embank against it, as they have been able 
to do since the close of the rebellion. 

The tree of corruption, sprung chiefly from the soil fertilized 
by those M'ho proclaimed a higher law than the Constitution, has 
produced in our country its natural fruit. It seems even to be 
growing with fearful rapidity, and producing every year a fresh 
and more abundant crop than that of the preceding season. Its 
roots have penetrated every State of our monarchically consoli- 
dated Union, diffusing exhalations that have tainted the moral 
atmosphere in all departments of society. And the pestiferous 
fruit, though in itself noxious, has come to be the chief object 
of aspiration amongst the American people, and is sought after 
with the greatest possible avidity, Wliat at an early period in 
our history, would have been rejected with scorn as dishonorable 
and degrading, is now coveted by large numbers of the commu- 
nity with the greatest zeal. 

The moral disease displayed itself fully with the installation of 
' the abolition party, in power in 1861. The men who appeared 
in, and those who were appointed to the chief places of trust and 
honor under the Government, were mainly those who were most 
sensibly tainted with the leprosy that had for years been diseas- 
ing the body politic of the North ; and the subsequent develop- 
ment of the public corruption, which from this time disclosed 
itself to the eyes of the nation, was chiefly traceable to this, 
class of public functionaries. Accusations followed accusations, 
from that period of cur history, and public ofiicials were accusad 
of peculations and plunder of the public money, which would 
never have been committed at an earlier period of our history. 
These charges, numerous as they were, nevertheless were mostly 
unheeded by the men and the party that controlled the National 
Government. And even when investigations were ordered, 
those appointed to inquire into the charges of corruption, were 
usually the friends and companions of the guilty parties them- 
selves. During the whole period of the civil war, this con- 
dition of affairs continued, the corruption all the while steadily 
increasing. And this, it has continued to do, up to the present 
time. 

It should have seemed probable, that the moral organization of 
the body politic would have revolted against the hideous deformi- 
ties that arose upon all sides j and have rebuked the corrupt men 



512 A REVIEW OF THE 

wlio perpetrated and those who sustained evil doers in their 
foul iniquities. But the false doctrines which had been propa- 
gated with success for j^ears, had also taken iirm hold of the 
opinions of the masses, and they no longer viewed public offences 
as their ancestors had done before them. Besides, they were 
assured by crafty leaders, that periods of turbulence, as civil 
wars, ever engender corruptions, and lead to such violations of 
principle as ever shock the moral sense of communities. As 
soon as the corrupt officials came to discover that the moral tone 
had lowered itself, their descent on the descending plane percepti- 
bly increased, and still further gained in velocity as ivcsh. license 
was granted. Action and reaction were thus plainly effective in 
the lowering of the moral tone. 

The lobby rings of the different States and nation, first showed 
themselves in their ntter deformity, after the accession of the 
Abolition party to power. In those States, fully under the con- 
trol of this party, the lobby at the seat of government was a 
iixed and profitable institution ; and many Democrats came to 
be participant in its doings. But though individual impurities 
were disclosed in the Democratic organization, its principal lead- 
ers placed themselves in opposition to the lobbyists, and strove 
to break up their calling. In Pennsylvania this was effected, 
under the new Constitution, adopted in the State in 1873, mainly 
by the Democratic party, against the votes of most of the oppo- 
sition part3^ In Washington, the corrupt lobby only attained to 
notoriety after the majority of both branches of Congress had 
become Abolitionists. 

The sinking of the moral tone, throughout the country, which 
took place after the Abolition party came into power, gave rise 
to the numerous scandals, which from time to time, blackened the 
memories of public men in their States and at the Federal 
Capital. In consequence of this moral fall, a more corrupt and 
less cultivated class of politicians were able, in their respective 
States and districts, to secure their elevation to Congress. Means 
were resorted to by the successful politicians, which men of 
honorable tone refused to adopt ; and when these reached Con- 
gress, they were eager to make up by bribes, and other corrupt 
practices, what they had expended to procure their seats. The 
Credit Mobilier, Pacific Mail, and numerous other scandals that 
inflicted dishonor upon Vice-President, Senators and other 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 5$ 

Members of Congress, are to be imputed to tlie lowering 
tone of moral purity that has ' pervaded the natibn since the 
year 1861. 

With corruption stalking in mid-day, unrebuked in the Federal 
and State Capitals, it was not surprising that it should react 
upon the body politic. This it has done ; and for a decade in 
the North, elections have proved farcical in the extreme. Men, 
for years, have been declared as elected Governors of States, 
Members of Congress, State Legislators and other officers, who 
never received the majority of the legal votes of the people. 
Fraudulent repeaters, purchased voters, and altered ]-eturns of 
elections, were employed to secure the prolongation of that party 
in power, wliich originally opened the flood-gates of political 
corruption. To such a degree of boldness did the so-called 
Republican leaders advance, that they no longer hesitated to 
count their victories in advance, basing them upon their knowl- 
edge of what the money placed in the hands of the leaders for 
the canvasses would be able to effect. Politicians no longer seek 
for men best fitted for public positions; and only those are 
selected as nominees, who respond most freely to the financial 
demands made upon them. The nominee must liquidate his. 
assessment, under pain of being stricken from the list of 
candidates, and another name substituted for his own by the 
committee that holds the party despotism in its hands. This 
corrupting and anti-republican system of political proceedure, 
originating in the fertile brains of Abolitionists, has also made 
its entry into the Democratic party. Corruption seems the all 
present attendant of modern American politics. 

Besides, is to be mentioned, as abolition fruit, the shocking mis- 
government which followed the accession of the revolutionary 
party to power in the South, by tlie aid of negro votes. Men 
were then elected as public officials, wdio were utterly unfitted 
for any other occupation, save that of cotton pickers upon the 
plantation of a Southern master. A large proportion of several 
of the Southern legislatures were composed for years, of freed 
negroes, who were no better fitted to legislate upon questions of 
government than the Chiefs of Soudan or Guinea. Many of 
those who were elected, had simply been barbers, waiters in 
hotels, or field laborers upon Southern plantations before the out- 
break of the rebellion. A few of them had picked up a srnatr 



514 A REVIEW OF THE 

tering of tlie elementary branches of an Englisli education, wLicli 
fitted them in their own and abolition estimation, to be tlie rulers 
and law-givers in their States and in the nation. But that 
eternal adaptation and fittiess of things, which cause harmony 
and their contrary inharmonyy soon displayed themselves in 
the workhigs of governmental affairs, after the South had become 
Africanized. 

It soon became apparent that it is not elementary education 
that fits men for self-government. This kind of learning only 
furnishes the tools for the acquisition of that other instruction, 
that prepares men for government. It is alone, after men 
have become imbued with the principles of moral science and 
political philosophy^ that they are qualified for taking part in 
governmental affairs, and not when they have simply mas- 
tered the rudiments of an education. The history of other 
nations and of former times should be studied by legislators, 
the nature of government be well examined, and reflected 
upon; and the experience of our own and foreign nations be 
dilligently observed, inferences drawn therefrom, and atten- 
tively weighed and considered. By such education alone, are 
men prepared for taking an intelligent share in the concerns of 
government. 

The misgovernment of years, that oppressed several of the 
Southern States from the period of reconstruction, until one 
after another of these were grasped from the talons of the filthy 
cormorants that were feeding upon them, is known throughout 
the nation. And some of these States as yet remain to be snatched 
from the political vultures that have fattened upon their sub- 
stance. South Carolina remains in the grasp of corrupt scound- 
relism, which was fastened upon her by a j^arty, whose leaders 
deserve the reprobation and contempt of coming ages. Their 
rotten system of negro government has been thoroughly tested 
in that State, and the late election of F. J. Moses and W. J. 
Whipper, the colored jurist, has almost satisfied their own cor- 
ruptionists, that the eyes of an indignant nation are opening to 
their misdeeds. 

But not only is the fruit of fanaticism exemplified in the 
flagrant corruption and misgovernment that are festering in the 
nation, but the business of the people has been ruined by the 
adoption of an unwise financial system, which may, perhaps, 



POLrnCAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 515 

ultimately produce universal bankruptcy and entail ruinous con- 
sequences upon coming generations. The condition of affairs 
under which we are now laboring, was predicted as sure to fol- 
low, should Congress adopt the Legal Tender Bill and banish 
gold and silver from business circles. But all the predictions 
were unheeded, and the conquest of the South was prosecuted at 
all hazards. It was accomplished ; and now the people are reap- 
ing the harvest of financial disaster, the seeds of which the 
fanatical men of the war epoch sowed. And when the hurricane 
of death has come, these same destroyers of the currency are 
striving to appear before the nationas the constitutional financiers 
of the country. Like the old ruler of darkness who, when sick, 
desired the Monkish Cowl, but when cured again, was soon ready 
to lay it aside. The destructive, party is smitten with sickness ; 
and it now desires to show its penitence. 

Can the condition of affairs under which we labor be altered ? 
Only one remedy appears to present the possibility of improve- 
ment. And that is the restoration of the constitutional Democ- 
racy to power, and the purification of their own ranks by a 
gradual elimination of the corrupt elements. Can more of re- 
form be expected from this party than from their political oppo- 
nents? Upon the affirmative determination of this question, 
depend the restoration of our Union back to a republican condi- 
tion, and its future preservation as a free government. Under the 
management of the revolutionay party, the Union from being a 
comparatively pure Confederated Kepublic, has become a cor- 
rupt consolidation ; and the demoralization of affairs threatens 
the general prostration of moral principles. 

Can the Democracy remedy this condition ? That they may do 
so, is hoped for the following reasons. The democracy are the 
national party of America, tracing lineal descent from the f ram ers 
of the republic. They are the constitutional party, the one 
which ever abides by its own and the nation's legal obligations ; oj)- 
poses all fanaticisms, but is the tolerator and extender of equal 
liberty to all religions. It is composed mainly of the conservative 
elements of the country. Its long continued existence, as a party, 
has been owing principally to the elements of its composition ; 
the ranks accepting as dogmatical truths, its cardinal fundamental 
principles finding their own, and the country's interest in so 



516 A REVIEW OF THE 

doing. The Democracy* are largely the party of the laboring 
people, who are not in possession of the wealth of the country. 
The leaders are men whom the just and constitutional principles 
of the party hold in its ranks; and whom otherwise, interest 
might in the ]N"orth attract to the opposition. These men when 
elevated to power, will again diffuse a new moral tone throughout 
the nation ; and if possible, restore the Union to its former 
republican purity. Is it not natural to suppose that a more 
healthy tone of morality will be established amongst the people, 
by leaders who observed their oaths to support the constitution, 
than by those who, relying upon a higher law, disregarded them ? 
By the latter, as has been seen, the political corruption has been 
introduced, but this remains to be arrested by the former. If 
however, they be unable to arrest the political disorders of our 
country, the days of the republic have ended. 

The bitter fruits that the American people have been com- 
pelled, by faniticism, to gather from the tree of evil, should 
admonish them to forsake the 4eaders, who have so treacherously 
seduced them. Let them return and accept the leadership of 
men of true principles ; men of the same principles as those who 
laid the foundation of the republic, and built up for it a peaceful 
and prosperous government. For if they continue to follow the 
blind guides of the past, then America has only begun her career 
of madness ; and a magazine of destruction is yet in reserve 
for her. If a speedy return to the path of wisdom be not made, 
one collision after another is in store for our country, until the 
o-rand climacteric epoch arrives. That will, in due time, come 
in the career of republicanism ; and fanaticism is hastening it 
with rapid steps. It will be the grand climacteric in the history 
of modern times, the French revolution being simjjly the minor. 
All the time the portents of the struggle are gathering. It will 
be the great world battle of Christianity and stable government 
ao-ainst the inlidel, anarchical hosts, who are striving for a total 
overthrow and reconstruction of civilized Society. Abolitionism 
has gained its first battle on the Western continent. The com- 
munistic forces of Europe are marshalling their battalions, and 
advancing them with steady steps towards the standards of 

*In the South, the wealthy classes attached themselves to the Democ- 
racy to resist the uncoustitutional movement of I'anaticism, and tliey 
remain united with that party. 



POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA. 617 

tlieir allies, the Auieriean fanatics and agitators. Both wlV, 
soon unite their legions on common ground ; proclaim the hold- 
ing of property to be robbery ; and the preparation for the last 
conflict will commence. Senseless propagandists are blindlj^ 
hastening towards the communistic centre. Wisdom can alono 
shield our nation from Vv'hat destiny seems to be gathering for 
her final dcstniction. 



LCv'L'?9 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




011897 285 5 



